That LASTMA official who slapped a Chief Magistrate

Shittu, hiding his face after he was arrested and handcuffed for slapping a Chief Magistrate Pic: PM News

The moment I saw the name of the LASTMA official who slapped a Chief Magistrate last Wednesday, I felt like I knew him. 

When I read the story further down and learnt that the incident happened at Pen Cinema Agege, it clicked. 

Without any doubt at all, that was the same LASTMA official that harassed my wife and I at Pen Cinema early one morning in 2012. The name on his breast tag stuck in my brain for a very long time.

We were coming from the Iju end and trying to turn into Ogba side of Oba Akinjobi on our way to our offices about 6am. The light changed and we stopped. The chap came to us and accused us of not stopping quickly enough when the traffic light changed to red.

He attempted to arrest us but we protested. I asked him to show me the markings on the road that indicated where motorists were supposed to stop. There were none. We couldn’t understand the crime. The light turned red, and we stopped, clear of the way of vehicles passed by the green light. What more did he want?

He said we did not stop early enough and pointed back to where we ought to have stopped. I told him that we were in motion when the light changed from green to red without the interval of yellow and that I stopped the moment I saw the red sign.

He insisted I should open my door for a policeman to enter the vehicle, but I did not oblige him and alighted to argue my point. He argued loudly and rudely that I was mischievous and had no intention of stopping until I saw him.

But I told him he was wrong, and could not rely on clairvoyance to arrest motorists. I had not broken any law and would protest being arrested. The law says stop at red. I did. What was he saying about my intentions? Was he a sorcerer? 

I told him he was on foot, with no spike in his hand for my tyres, no gun or anything. I was piloting a moving vehicle. If I was bent on jumping the red light, he would not be in a position to accost me much less threaten me with arrest. I told him that the very fact that he walked up to me suggested that I had already stopped the vehicle.

The man was very stubborn o, and was completely impervious to truth. He would not back down. Our saving grace was that bystanders, including street boys attracted by the commotion that morning agreed we left a safe distance for the vehicles with the right of way. They told him to let us go. He insulted them.

His own colleagues attempted to pull him from the scene as the area boys around threatened to become violent if he arrested us. I had to resort to serious prayers for God to avert an escalation of the situation, lest we were accused of inciting area boys against law enforcers. Sanity later prevailed.

My wife said something that morning after I vowed to take the matter up with his superiors. She said I should leave him. ‘A ko ni tie niwaju’ (Translating roughly into ‘He will meet his match in future’) she said in consolatory tone.

Now, Taye Shittu has met more than his match. He allegedly slapped a Chief Magistrate, Mrs. Komolafe Abimbola over the same issue of traffic light at the same spot.

Shittu accused Mrs. Abimbola of not obeying the traffic light and ordered her to come out of her car.

The woman was said to have followed Shittu’s instruction after which there was an argument between them.

During the argument Shittu allegedly slapped Mrs. Abimbola and she sustained injury on her face.

The victim reported the assault at Pen Cinema Police Station and Shittu was promptly arrested by the police.

While confirming the incident, Lagos State Deputy Police Public Relations Officer, Mr. Damatus Ozoani, said the accused will be charged to court after the conclusion of police investigation.

A former LASTMA official who asked for anonymity, told PM News that the attitude of Shittu was an embarrassment to the authority.

Danfo driver goes nude to evade arrest



The driver stripping off his clothes. Credit: Punch

When you exasperatedly shout ‘were’ (madman) to a reckless danfo driver in Lagos, more often than not, you are stating a fact, not necessarily insulting him. Many of them deserve an appointment with experienced psychiatrists.

The Punch reports this morning an interesting incident that demonstrates this. A  LASTMA team apprehended a commercial bus driver at Palm Groove for picking passengers on the road.

To evade arrest, he rips off all his clothes including boxers, putting the officers in a dilemma as to what to do next. Unsure of how to deal with the man, they decided to take pictures of his vehicle and number plate and let him go.

The same driver, described as an old man had earlier tried a trick that was not successful. Upon arrest, he had brought a bowl from inside his bus that contained a substance with an awful smell. The LASTMA officers, policemen and commuters in the vicinity reportedly took to their heels to avoid the stench.

But one of the officials came back and stood his ground, wielding a baton and insisting that the man must follow them. The driver then resorted to the nude prank, which paid off, at least for now.

Can you see the mental state of some of the people ferrying commuters to and fro in Lagos? Apparently, commuters had been sitting in that bus with that fetid bowl hidden in a corner of the bus.

This man and many danfo drivers are not fit to be on the road. This is why you must commit your ways to God before living your home every morning.

 

Beware of uniformed hustlers at Berger

If you drive through Ojodu Berger Bus Stop on the Lagos Ibadan Expressway, take special precaution not to pick up or drop people on either side of the bus stop.

If you must, go further away from the bus stop and ‘shine your eyes’ very well.

LASTMA officials and policemen have of late turned the bus stop to ‘work-chop’. Remember the year is drawing to a close. People are getting desperate for money for the Yuletide. 

Actually, there are ‘No Parking’ signs on either side of the road, but if you reason that they are only meant for commercial drivers who park indiscriminately and not private car owners who drop off people in seconds and zoom off, you will be making a mistake.

They will pounce on you and quote Lagos State Traffic law that specifies a fine of N35, 000 for such an offence.  It will then be up to you to offer something impressive enough as a bribe for them to let you run along to meet your appointments.  

A police van blocked me yesterday as I tried to pick my wife. The waiting could not have been up to a second, because she had not even opened the door when they came from their hiding.

One of the boys rudely told me I had committed a traffic obstruction offence by picking someone at Berger. I was to follow them to their office somewhere to pay my fine. At his command, one of them got into my car and was piloting me to the location.

I got off by demanding to see their most senior officer, to whom I introduced myself and explained that I did not park, but was to pick my wife for less than a minute.

He sent me off with a warning in espirit de corp. (I spent some of my early years in journalism on the police/judicial beat.)

 

Road trap: Police, LASTMA replace muggers at Mile 2

On the eve of Xmas, I wrote about muggers' exploits at Mile Two oke.

Today about 10 am, I passed the same spot and I have both good and bad news. First, the good news: the bad boys are gone from the spot, probably because of what I wrote, or because a powerful person experienced the same thing and organised a police raid.

Now to the bad news: LASTMA officials and police officers are now at the spot, and they are not there to help motorists, sadly. It's their brand new meal ticket.

I was coming from Osodi and wanted to link the bridge that leads to Mile Two Bus Stop below at the emergency ramp created just after where FESTAC buses load. Surprisingly, a LASTMA official and a policeman were rushing at me, but could not quickly cross the road to where I was.

They waved at me to stop. I tried to see the name tag on the LASTMA official, there was none; first red flag. Second red flag: the expressions on their faces were of someone who had just witnessed murder, and could scarcely wait for vehicles to pass to lay his hands on the 'suspect'.

I tried to figure out what I could have done wrong, I couldn’t. But with the red flags, waiting to find out would be a grave mistake. Besides, even genuine LASTMA guys these days are adept at pulling a rabbit out of the hat with uncommon ease. With the newly passed Lagos Traffic Law, you can never be too sure what they have up their sleeves. I waved to them in return and zoomed off. The policeman rushed at me and tried to open my door, but it was locked.

My suspicion is that the guys were after me for taking the emergency ramp, which motorists have taken for ages. It was actually created over a year ago by the authorities as an alternative exit for motorists coming from Osodi and going to Mile 2, Orile, or back to Osodi.

There is usually chaotic traffic at the FESTAC exit, especially with the FESTAC and Okokomaiko-bound buses staying on the road to pick passengers. The ramp has succeeded mainly in improving the driving experience of motorists at that location as people who are not going in the direction of FESTAC or the Mile 2- Badagry Expressway no longer need to contest the main exit with those who are. 

But apparently, those who thought up the smart alternative among the traffic officials have since moved on, leaving behind those who see an opportunity to cash in.

So my advice to you is that when next you are on that route, it’s better you take the FESTAC exit, or you go to Berger to make a u-turn.

Wish you safe motoring

Confessions of a US traffic cop, lessons for LASTMA

 

Nigerian police officers, LASTMA officials, FRSC men and others involved in road safety and traffic law enforcement have a lot to learn from this American police officer, especially in the area of use of discretion and responsible traffic law enforcement.

Mike Brucks retired from the El Paso Police Department as a traffic cop last May after 22 years and almost 40,000 tickets, by his estimation. He was featured by Yahoo!

 Here are some of his stories from the road and tips for motorists looking to avoid a ticket.

Besides speeding, which is the reason for most tickets, what's most likely to get a traffic cop's attention?

 

Seatbelts, cell phones, red lights, and stop signs. I concentrate on all the things that can cause an accident. There are some cops who write tickets for expired plates, for having no insurance or registration, but you're not going to crash because of any of that. I focused on safety issues—that's what I like to do.

 

Do traffic cops think it's cheating to hide behind billboards?

 

No. You've got a radar detector; you know where we hide. If you are thinking we are hiding somewhere, it's because you're speeding.

 

Do you have favourite hiding places?

 

I stay on the freeway mostly. That's where there are more speeders. I'll park under overpasses, on bridges. I need to be able to start the bike and accelerate to go after someone. If there are a lot of exits, I can miss [a speeder] who can maybe get off at an exit, and then it's too late to catch him.

 

How much leeway do you give someone before writing them a speeding ticket?

 

The speed limit in Texas used to be 60 mph, [and] well, out on the clear road where there's a lot of visibility I give people leeway. I wouldn't write tickets until they got to 80 mph. I've never worked an area where the speed limit drops a lot without warning, what I call a trap. If there's a new speed limit that's lower, it [takes] time for people to get used to it and I don't write tickets there.

 

What can a driver say to get out of a ticket?

 

When someone tells me that a family member has just been sent to the hospital and they're on their way, how can I ticket them for that? I tell them that they're not being safe, that they need to slow down and stay safe. That's about it.

 

I think now it's much more of a rat-race world than it was 30 years ago. The workforce has generated that. People have to be at work on time or risk getting fired, kids have to be picked up and taken places—it's just citizens in a hurry. Ninety-eight percent of the people I stop are law-abiding good citizens, and they say they have no reason to speed. That's an easy ticket. They're not happy, but I could go months without any problems, without anyone cussing me out. I wrote a lot of warnings, too, but it all depends on the situation, if they were being safe.

Are speed limits too low?

 

No, the traffic engineers, at least in Texas, are pretty good. It's not that some parts of the highway are safer for speeding, it's that drivers aren't always paying attention. People die on lonely deserted stretches of road too. There are a lot of times drivers aren't concentrating. They need to understand you're going 100 feet per second on the highway. Above 75 mph things just happen so fast, [whether it's] a flat tire, a coyote, wind, dirt, or rocks. It's not that much better now that cars are safer; reaction times are still the same.

 

What's the toughest ticket you've had to write?

 

I clocked a woman coming down from New Mexico on Highway 54 at 111 mph. She had just been stopped for going 90 mph 15 minutes [earlier] in New Mexico. Everybody has a reason, and I want to know it. I always ask why someone was speeding, and that's just to open things up. I want to know what they're thinking, if they need my help for something. She had been crying, and the tears didn't just start—they'd been going on a long time, you can tell. She was on her way to a motel in El Paso to catch her husband who was shacked up with another woman there, cheating. How do you write a ticket for that?

 

Who's the craziest speeder you've seen?

 

I stopped a guy going 136 mph. I caught him mostly because he thought he lost me. I came up beside him and blocked his front wheel on the curb. The hardest part after that was now I have to be courteous and respectful, although he could have killed someone, and that makes me angry. It's really too bad, he was a good kid, never been in trouble, but now he had to go to jail for felonious evading, and that's really going to wreck his life.

 

When do you not chase a speeder?

 

I clocked a guy on a crotch-rocket bike doing 189 mph. Just let him go. Since police departments began to get sued for chasing speeders, around 1995, there's a fine line. You have to determine if you can catch him, if chasing him will cause an accident for him, for you, for the public. There's no way to catch anyone like that. ..

Xmas tragedy: LASTMA beats man to death

Popoola, A sympathiser with the deceased wife, Modupe (right). Image: Punch

A 54 year old man left his home early on Christmas eve to hustle for money to celebrate the Yuletide, but did not make it back home alive, thanks to two Lagos Traffic Management Authority (LASTMA) officials.

The commercial bus driver, Isaac Popoola, was allegedly beaten to death while trying to resist impoundment of his bus for yet unknown traffic offences.

The bus conductor, Aremu Salawu, who witnessed the incident, told the Punch that the LASTMA officials, Adesanya Olatunde and Oludele Ogunrinde, assaulted Popoola at about 6.30am around Brown Bus Stop resulting in his death.

He said the deceased’s bus conveying 17 passengers from Igando/Isheri was approaching Brown Junction when a LASTMA pick-up van crossed the bus.

The leader of the LASTMA officials, according to Salawu, ordered two of his men to impound the vehicle and take it to the agency’s office.

Salawu alleged that Olatunde hit Salawu’s head with the metallic head of the seat belt and banged his head against the steering and the door frame of the bus many times while they were both struggling for the steering.

Salawu said, “Baba (Popoola) held on to the steering asking what his offence was. But the LASTMA man (Olatunde) said it was his commander that ordered him to seize the bus.

“When Baba refused to leave the steering, the LASTMA man started hitting Popoola’s head against the steering and the door frame. He did this so many times, until he was unable to talk again.

“I then rushed to Mosafejo Police Station where I made a statement and people who were watching the scenario were able to apprehend one of the LASTMA men (Olatunde). They brought him to the police station before we were transferred to Area F.

Olatunde has been apprehended, while the second LASTMA official is on the run.

Two issues leapt to my mind when I read this story. Why would LASTMA officials struggle for the steering with this elderly man? Since his vehicle had been blocked, why was it necessary or urgent to forcibly subdue him?

Secondly, why was this man not rushed to the hospital immediately by the officials or even the bystanders or sympathizers?

For an incident that happened at 6:30 am, is it not strange that the body of the victim was still available to be snapped by the reporter at the police station at 4pm?

Nigerians have to stop this primitive habit of concluding someone is dead simply because he seems not to be breathing or has no pulse. Elsewhere in the world, people are revived at the hospital after they had seemed to lose their pulses.

That gentleman might be alive now if he had been rushed to the hospital.

 

LASTMA bars junior officers from arresting traffic offenders

Babatunde Edu

The Lagos State Traffic Management Authority, LASTMA, has ordered junior officers in its rank to stop arresting traffic offenders in the state forthwith.

The action was taken in a bid to checkmate aggressive enforcement of the state’s traffic law by LASTMA.

The General Manager of LASTMA, Engr. Babatunde Edu, disclosed this in his address at a public forum on the law, organised by the Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association, NECA, at the weekend.

According the Vanguard, Edu said the move was a spontaneous measure to respond to the complaints against aggressive law enforcement by junior officers.

He urged the public to note the name and report any junior officer who victimises or harasses them.

While urging members of the public not to take laws into their hands when unlawfully arrested, Edu said the officers are to render assistance to the motorists in ensuring traffic laws are voluntarily complied with.

He said: “You can easily identify the junior officer with black epaulet on their shoulders; they cannot arrest, only the senior ones with red epaulets on their uniforms can arrest.

We have stopped the juniors from arresting motorists and okada riders except during a joint operation. That is the extent we have gone in checkmating aggressive enforcement of the law”

Don’t be violent, Fashola tells LASTMA, others

Lagos State Governor Babatunde Fashola on Monday urged officials of the state’s Traffic Management Authority, Kick Against Indiscipline and Neighbourhood Watch to respect people’s rights by using non-violent strategy in discharging their duties.

Fashola, who spoke through a video teleconferencing, gave the advice at the commencement of a training programme, organised by the Office of Senior Special Assistant on Transport Education for 7,960 law enforcement officers at the state Public Service Staff Development Centre, Magodo.
 

The governor said, “As law enforcement personnel, you must display the core values of integrity, commitment, pride, professionalism, self-respect and respect for others in the course of discharging your core responsibilities.

“You are engaged in the difficult yet important business of helping to regulate human behaviour on a daily basis. Your decisions affect people’s lives. You must bear that in mind in your decision making. You are working for the people. You are their servant and not their masters.”

I hope they will hear this and stop behaving crudely on the roads.

Soldier, driver arrested for driving against traffic on 3rd Mainland bridge

The Lagos State Task Force on Environmental and Special Offences (Enforcement) Unit has arrested a Lance Corporal, Umaru Usman and a driver for driving against traffic on Third Mainland Bridge.

The truck with the registration number, YOBE XB 323 FKA, in which the driver and the Lance Corporal were in, was impounded. The truck was carrying bags of rice, cement and boxes of sugar when it was impounded.

According to Task force Chairman, Bayo Sulaiman, the truck had been forfeited to the state while the lance corporal, who acted as a pilot to the truck, has been handed over to the military authorities “because we found out that he had no pass and was piloting the vehicle for monetary gains. The driver will be charged to court for violation the state traffic law.”

 

What happened to the LASTMA officials who publicly disgraced their boss?

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The case of the killing of Hameed Balogun is slipping out of public consciousness gradually. But one person who must still be nursing his bruised ego is the General Manager of the Lagos State Traffic Management Authority (LASTMA), Mr. Babatunde Edu, whose accounts of events were found to be not exactly reliable.

After valiantly defending what he believed to be the correct version of events, Mr Edu was ultimately forced to eat the humble pie with a sachet of chilled pure water following the exoneration of Mrs. Yinka Johnson, the hapless banker that he vociferously accused of killing the LASTMA official, Hammeed Balogun.

For some time to come, it would be embarrassing for Mr. Edu to stand in front of his boss, Governor Babatunde Fashola, who henceforth will be wise to take his claims with a pinch of salt and an assortment of other soup condiments.

But the fault was not entirely his. He probably did no wrong to believe what his men on the field told him.

When the first wave of doubt was cast on the LASTMA version of what transpired on that sad day that Mr. Balogun lost his life, he probably had called his men to ask them about the veracity of their claims again, and those ones swore on their great-grandfathers’ graves that they were telling the truth.

But then, the odds were steeply stacked against their version of what transpired. How possible was it for a car to hit someone and not have any dent? That was most unlikely. Even if the vehicle was armoured, there ought to have been some tell-tale signs of impact.

Then, again, there was a picture of the vehicle in question being prepared for towing by LASTMA officials. The towing vehicle was visible in the picture, parked right in front of the banker’s car, with a LASTMA official standing beside it.

This picture put a lie to the claim by Mr. Edu in an official statement that the banker drove away from the scene, and aligned more with the version of the banker that she did not leave the scene with her car.

According to reports, detectives who visited the crime scene for a reconstruction of the incident were hard pressed to correlate LASTMA’s account with what could have possibly transpired on the fateful day. As hard as they tried, they couldn’t see the possibility of LASTMA’s claims.

And lastly, eye-witnesses stepped forward to give account of what they saw, which simply was that a commercial bus popularly called ‘danfo’ hit the gentleman while trying to cross the road after apprehending the banker for one-way traffic violation.

And so it was that Mrs. Johnson escaped the rap of manslaughter that LASTMA desperately tried to pin on her.

This incident highlights what members of the public have always said about the lack of professionalism of many of the LASTMA men on the roads.

Therein lies one of the tragedies of the draconian traffic law in Lagos. You can only make a law this draconian with the assumption that it will be implemented by angels. However, LASTMA men, as we all know, are no angels.

They are members of our self-acknowledged corrupt society who are just trying to earn a living. Like the rest of us, they have children in school who need wear, books and provisions, and who may sometimes fall sick towards the end of the month when the pocket is virtually dry.

They have mothers-in-law with arthritis, aged mothers with diabetes, hypertension or some other ailments requiring consistent funds for maintenance. They have younger ones who want to set up own businesses and need financial support. Above all, they want to one day walk away from chasing after ‘danfos’ and ‘okadas’, and retire into a quiet neighbourhood, tending chickens or pigs.

There is not a very bright prospect of a LASTMA official on a consolidated salary of less than N20,000 rising to all these responsibilities without once or twice wandering off the straight and narrow path of righteousness.

How wise is the move making the minimum fine in a traffic law N20,000 when the majority of those who will implement it do not earn that much legitimately in 30 days of toiling day and night?

And when LASTMA officials publicly derail as they did in the Hameed Balogun/Yinka  Johnson case, what does the government do to warn state officials that it would not tolerate flippancy, and less than honourable conduct? The answers blow in the air.