29th November, 2010
Three mobile policemen recently threw caution to the winds and reportedly broke into the LASTMA office on Victoria Island, Lagos, southwest Nigeria, to forcibly release a motorcycle impounded by LASTMA officials for violating traffic laws.
P.M.NEWS learnt from a reliable source that trouble broke out when some LASTMA officials arrested an unidentified commercial motorcyclist along Ozumba Mbadiwe Road, at the Nigerian Law School junction, where motorcyclists have been banned from plying by the Lagos State government. He was arrested, taken to their office and issued a ticket.
The motorcyclist however have refused to collect the ticket and instead went to solicit for help from some mobile policemen attached to an embassy nearby.
The three armed mobile policemen, allegedly led by an Inspector, who is reportedly attached to MOPOL 43 in Lagos State, stormed the LASTMA office and forcibly released the motorcycle.
They were said to have threatened to shoot any LASTMA official who dares to prevent them from recovering the motorcycle.
But the zonal head of the LASTMA office saved the situation from degenerating further. He cautioned his men not to react in like manner, while the mobile policemen took the motorcycle to their base at the embassy gate.
P.M.NEWS gathered that the LASTMA officials later retrieved the motorcycle and took it back to their office, using maturity.
A witness who identified himself as Yakubu Joshua, a motorcyclist told P.M.NEWS that the action of the Mobile cops was disgraceful. “What is the business of mobile policemen guarding an embassy, with the work of LASTMA officials? The policemen should be punished,” he stated.
When P.M.NEWS visited the LASTMA office to see the zonal head, he was said to have gone to the LASTMA headquarters in Oshodi to brief the authority about the matter, but a LASTMA official confirmed the incident.
—Paul Iyoghojie
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