•Remove disused automobiles from Lagos roads or forfeit them, govt warns
By Tessy Igomu
Everywhere you go across Lagos State, abandoned and disused vehicles confront you, distorting the aesthetics of the environment and constituting a nuisance on the streets. With most stripped of every fitting and left as carcasses, the hazard they constitute cannot be overemphasised.
Lagos has tons of such abandoned vehicles. Everybody can definitely feel their despicable presence. Aside from defacing the environment, they are veritable hideouts for hoodlums, even as they serve as breeding grounds for disease-spreading rodents, reptiles and mosquitoes. In some areas, they serve as refuse dumps, as people capitalise on their derelict state to dispose of their waste in them.
Oftentimes, especially in densely populated inner city areas where the roads are narrow, they end up taking up substantial parts and impeding free flow of traffic, thus leaving motorists and pedestrians to squeeze through very narrow space. Their negative effect is felt more during the rainy season, as they reduce vehicular movement in streets that link major roads, thereby aggravating an already bad traffic situation during the period.
With abandoned vehicles becoming part of Lagos State streets and roads, it has almost made a mess of the quest towards attaining a mega city status. And as the habit of abandoning vehicles has virtually become a culture, many car owners and importers of vehicles have turned streets into garages for worn-out vehicles.
Of major concern are vehicles, especially heavy duty trucks, abandoned on major highways, with their parts sticking out dangerously, thereby posing a risk to road users and pedestrians.
Areas that have become notorious for such acts in Lagos are Capitol Road, Oniwaya Street and Orile Agege in Agege. Orile-Iganmu and Coker are two other places where commercial bus drivers dump disused vehicles. Streets in Ikeja, especially Ipodo and Oduyemi, are also packed full of abandoned vehicles. In Kirikiri town, under Oriade Local Council Development Area (LCDA), streets like Comfort Oboh, Happy Home Avenue, Okoduwa and Dillion Street, close to the Kirikiri Prisons, are riddled with carcasses of trucks and articulated vehicles.
But with the Lagos State government ready to wield the big stick against abandoned vehicles by having them mopped up, the era of having them as permanent features on Lagos roads are likely to be over.
According to the Lagos State government, it will begin evacuation of abandoned, disused vehicles and tricycles littering the state from July 1, 2017. And to make the exercise effective, it has already inaugurated a task force for full enforcement.
Special Adviser to the Governor on Central Business Districts, Hon. Agboola Dabiri, while inaugurating the committee in Alausa, the seat of power, said that the traffic menace caused by abandoned vehicles has become a source of concern for the government, noting that there was the need to have the issue tackled head-on to find an enduring solution.
His words: “In furtherance of its spirited effort to make Lagos State cleaner, healthier and more liveable, the Lagos State Government has established a special task force for the removal of abandoned and disused vehicles and tricycles littering the state.
“Similarly, the state government has appointed a vehicular scrap collection agent in line with Section 56, sub-section (1), of the Lagos State Harmonised Environmental Law, 2017, whose activity will commence from Saturday, July 1, 2017.
“Consequently, Lagosians are hereby notified of the operational procedure of the task force as follows: pasting of removal notice stickers on identified abandoned vehicles with a seven-day period for self-removal by owners of the vehicle. Upon expiration of the grace period, identified abandoned vehicles will be removed by the taskforce to a designated depot within the state.
“Where such vehicles are unclaimed within 30 days, the vehicles will be forfeited to the government and undergo proper disposal accordingly. The general public is hereby advised to comply strictly with this directive while security agencies are urged to ensure compliance.”
However, many have viewed this directive with scepticism, noting that several moves in the past to the state of abandoned vehicles did not yield any long-term result.
In July 2009, the Federal Road Safety Commission issued a threat to owners of abandoned and broken-down vehicles and other objects disturbing the flow of traffic on roads nationwide to remove them or face prosecution and forfeiture, if they were evacuated by the FRSC. But years after, obstructions are still being caused by these vehicles, with many lives put in danger.
The uncanny habit of indiscriminate abandonment of vehicles also made the Lagos State government, in January 2013, to re-echo an earlier ultimatum that all abandoned and disused vehicles would be evacuated from streets or impounded. This was also mainly as a security measure to prevent miscreants from planting explosives in them. Subsequently, a committee on abandoned vehicles was inaugurated and charged with the responsibility of removing the vehicles from all Lagos roads.
Then, owners of abandoned vehicles, especially on Lagos Mainland, were given a three-day ultimatum to remove them.
Actually, there was compliance, as over 4,300 abandoned and disused vehicles were removed. With time, however, about 4,632 vehicles were discovered to have found their way back to over 9,100 roads in the state.
Commissioner for transportation, Kayode Opeifa, while speaking on the development, had noted that: “It is equally sad that as soon as we completed the removal exercise in Surulere Local Government, working in conjunction with the CDCs and the local government chairman, some vehicles were back on the roads, especially on Cole Street, Shifawu Street and Ayilara/Clegg area. These vehicles are veritable tools for hoodlums, miscreants, armed robbers and other forms of social vices. Also, they pose a health risk to residents.”
As it stands right now, most streets in Lagos have metamorphosed into a nest for abandoned vehicles, most of the vehicles having been dumped there by mechanics that have turned the road to their auto workshop. Many access roads in the state are choked with disused cars and could be mistaken for car dumps.
According to some residents of Comfort Oboh Street, Kirikiri, the issue of abandoning trucks along the road for months and even years has become a tradition in the area, even as designated trailer parks are scattered around. Most of them noted that the trucks usually resurface in no time to occupy their place after being towed by the authorities.
Most Lagos residents also stressed that the issue of abandoned vehicles would persist because those that were evacuated have never been properly disposed of.
However, other residents have averred that having a functional vehicle crushing facility would make owners of such vehicles to take them there for recycling at no cost.
For Stanley Omenka, a social critic and environmentalist, aside from issuing ultimatums, the state government should go a step further to revive the car crushing plant at Shalla in Epe. He noted that owners of abandoned vehicles would voluntarily evacuate them to such a place, if the facility were functional and accessible.
“Statistics have shown that Nigerians spend up to $5 billion every year importing vehicles from the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia, with 67 per cent of them being second-hand. With the country neck-deep in the importation of used vehicles, thousands more will become dilapidated over time and like a vicious circle, they will still find their place on roads. The best option remains to have a functional car crushing facility in place,” Omenka said.