Lagos State government yesterday arrested some miscreants who are illegally operating as traffic laws enforcement officers in the metropolis, thereby harassing and extorting motorists in the state.
Parading the people before newsmen at the state government Secretariat, Alausa, Lagos, the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Transportation, Olawale Musa said the state government has zero tolerance for illegal extortion of residents, especially motorists by miscreants.
Musa warned that the arrest of eleven fake enforcement officers who daily extort money from unsuspecting Motorists at Ibeju-Lekki junction and Akodo area of the State is the beginning of the clamp down on such criminals in the state.
He pointed out that the Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu administration will not fold its arms and allow some unscrupulous elements to continue to bring hardship on its citizens, especially at this period of economic challenges in the country.
“We have announced severally that nobody is allowed to collect money for local government on the street of Lagos and the government has set up a team to ensure that anybody that does that is picked up and from that Lekki axis, we had this report with the aid of Governors monitoring team, we are able to arrest 11 people collecting money illegally on the guise that they work for one local government or the other.
“They will be charged to court to explain themselves and I want to sound a note of warning to others that do the same thing that we will not relent, the government is all out for them, we advised them to desist because we will be on the neck of any local government that is doing this.
“If you have any issues you call us, we will come and address it, but when you have people coming on the road on the guise that you want to have revenue at this hard time, collecting money from motorists on the road is not fair and it is illegal in Lagos State to resist it.”
Musa added that it is illegal for Local Government Area authorities in the state to deploy people on the roads to be intimidating and extorting residents, saying as it negates the Lagos State Road Traffic Law, Section Eighteen, 2018 which empowers only the Lagos State Traffic Management Authority, LASTMA to carry out such operations on the roads.
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