The Lagos State Government is set to put an end
to indiscriminate parking of vehicles on sidewalks.
Governor Babatunde Fashola on Sunday said there
was a need to ensure sanity in people’s attitude to driving and road usage.
He said the Ministry of Physical Planning and
other relevant agencies had been instructed to begin aggressive sanitisation of
the state roads by removing vehicles causing obstruction to free vehicular
movement.
The governor, who was fielding questions from
Lagosians during the celebration of his 2,000 days in office said, “I have
instructed the Ministry of Physical Planning and other ministries concerned to
go out and remove vehicles from sidewalks.
“If you cannot contain your vehicles inside your
premises, we will come and take them away.”
The governor also urged traders in the state to
desist from trading on the sidewalks, saying it prevents people living with
disabilities from having unhindered space to use.
Meanwhile, former Lagos State Commissioner for
Public Transportation, Dr. Segun Ogundimu, has asked Fashola to stop pursuing
commercial motorcyclists, popularly called okada riders but face real
issues in the state.
Ogundimu, at a press conference in Lagos on Sunday,
said, “The traffic law as it relates to the okada operators should not
make you lose sight of the necessity to protect the travelling public.
“You must do something about real issues in the
state rather than pursue okada riders all over the place.”
He said the force with which the restriction of okadas
on some routes was being enforced was like “killing an ant with a sledge
hammer”.
Ogundimu said during his era as commissioner, the
challenges of okada riders were not different from what obtained currently.
He said a very sizeable number of operators were
unemployed school leavers, some of whom are graduates, were non-indigenes who
had noticed the yawning gap in the state’s supply side of public
transportation.
Therefore, the operators, he said, had taken up
the gauntlet to tackle the challenge created by the inadequate support for the
travelling public.
He said with the restriction and strict
enforcement, the increasing tendencies of operators to be hired by negative
groups to perpetrate nefarious activities to people of questionable characters
were high.
Ogundimu said okada remained the only
viable and swift means of affordable public transportation in Lagos today.
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