A disturbing video went viral in the last one week showing the resurgence of highway-cum-street criminality in Lagos. The embarrassing video showed some grumps who swooped on the ever busy Lekki-Ajah Expressway in their numbers harassing car owners.
The hoodlums particularly targeted exotic brands for extortion. The scenes were quite scary and horrid. Their victims were given no choice. You either forcefully greesed their palms or had your car’s window glass smashed or the body of the car badly dented.
These vile characters would corner car owners during traffic congestion that usually hallmarks the rush hours when vehicles move in snail speed or break down, aggressively demanding to be “settled.” The miscreants would damage or scratch the cars should their victims refuse to heed their financial demands.
Such high-traffic points as the Ajah Underbridge, Chisco Roundabout and Marwa Bus Stop were particular hotspots for this egregious activity.
Mercifully, however, the authorities have clamped down on the villaneous elements and restored a modicum of sanity in that corridor. The Lagos State Commissioner for Environment and Water Resources, Tokunbo Wahab, gave the hint in a post on his official X handle, which was accompanied by a video showing the arrested suspects.
Wahab confirmed that the midnight intelligence-led raid, carried out by operatives of the Lagos State Rapid Response Squad (RRS), was targeted at “miscreants and hoodlums who have been constituting a nuisance and posing a threat to motorists and other road users.”
The agency reassured residents and affirmed that the “RRS will continue to sustain intelligence-led operations and enforcement actions against criminal elements whose activities threaten public safety and disrupt the free movement of people and vehicles across the state.”
The menace of ‘Omotaku’ irritants is emblematic of the heinous activities of the street urchins, popularly called Area Boys,’ who have turned the city of Lagos into one vast, scary swath. Boys such as these snippy urchins, many of whom are in their pubescent, are some of the elements who eventually morph into garage touts.
Most of them are products of broken homes; they are social deviants who ran away from home or dropped out of school to eke out a living in the fast lanes of Lagos. They find makeshift abodes in under bridges and all kinds of dingy street corners.
They start life by engaging in petty stealing like pickpocketing in busy buses during rush hours or carry traders’ loads in markets for paltry fees.
They also constitute terrible public nuisance by often openly soliciting for money, exploiting the hospitable cultural proclivity for giving particularly common among the Yoruba people. But they turn the whole thing into a game of heist by turning violent when any of their targets refuses to greese their palms.
The egregious elements are gradually weaned into being bus conductors or garage touts to vent for passengers, after worming themselves into the hearts of motor park lords.
These garage touts, popularly called ‘Agberos’ in local parlance, derive strength and legitimacy from the transport unions, the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) and the Road Transport Employers Association of Nigeria (RTEAN), tacitly backed by some state governments and politicians.
This is precisely the source of their audacity and staying power. They are used mainly by politicians who empower them as thugs to harass political opponents or carry out other atrocious activities during electioneering.
Even now, many Lagosians are skeptical that the ‘Omotaku’ irritants arrested for extorting car owners may soon be left off the hook because they are veritable ‘foot soldiers’ of politicians. Some state actors coddle them, making it difficult to tame them.
The touting trade has become rather sophisticated because of this subterranean patronage from politicians who spoil those characters silly with heavy financial inducement and other perquisites. They have thus become more organized and inched gradually into other major cities in the South West and many parts of the country.
By their modus operandi, the “agberos,” or garage touts are part of the city transport hubs. When they are not engaged by politicians, they are mostly hired by transport unions to coerce and extort commercial vehicle drivers in the name of the daily revenue collections from drivers of buses, motorcycles and tricycles.
Often scuzzy in appearance and high on drugs and booze that sufficiently coarsen them, the touts are inured to violence and intimidation in collecting the daily illegal levies.
Their nuisance is legendary. They are more or less lords unto themselves. They cause needless gridlocks and pick up tangles in motor parks, on the roads as well as major bus stops because of their mercurial temperament and irascible nature, accentuated by illicit drug influence.
It is time we put paid to the shenanigans of these street urchins in whatever form they manifest. Enough is enough of the mulish characters’ disturbing lawlessness and acrimonious activities at motor parks, highways, markets, bus stops and other places where they operate.
To do that effectively, the state actors who embolden them and unwittingly acquiesce to their fiendish activities through patronage for electioneering and other activities must stop doing so. The time has come when politicians and the others who engage them must allow patriotic fervour to override their narrow interests.
The law enforcement agents should be allowed to tame them by continuously clamping down on them. Let sanity return to the highways, motor parts, major bus stops and markets.