A former Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in South Africa, Mr Bola Babarinde, has urged Gov. Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos to restore sanity on roads and public places in the state.
Babarinde, also the Deputy Director Sanwo-Olu/Hamzat Campaign Council, Diaspora Directorate, in a statement on Wednesday in Lagos, decried the blatant disregard for law and order by motorists in the state.
“Enough of lawlessness and issues of area boys, and the street urchins controlling the affairs on our roads.
“There are solutions to these menace and we, APC in diaspora, are ready to partner with the administration of Babajide Sanwo Olu for a greater Lagos.
“Lagos roads, drainages, markets and other public places are worth to be declared a state of emergency both in maintenance and management,” the diaspora leader said.
According to him, Lagos should be sanitised like the situation in the 70s and 80s when orderliness pervaded all public places.
“We all grew up in Lagos and life was so great in the seventies and early eighties during our primary, secondary and university days when orderliness in the society was normal.
“We had scholar tickets for buses which was our school uniforms and badges, meal ticket in cafeterias and luncheon voucher gifts from our elder ones working in reputable companies like Total, Mobil and Texaco, these vouchers are accepted at Dominos and Ilupeju supermarkets to mention but a few.
“Life was really full of excitement and hope in those golden days.
“Almost everyone was law-abiding; queuing at bus stops before boarding buses was normal, driving against the flow of traffic was never even imagined,” he recounted.
He said that at the time, the Lagos Metropolitan Transport Services buses had signs of their destinations with regular checkers in those buses to fish out fraudulent passengers “and sanity prevailed in Lagos.”
The APC chieftain said that the massive influx of people from other regions due to the rural-urban migration “of the late eighties till now brought more of negatives than blessings.”
“There are lots of recklessness, lack of respect for others, outright disregard to law of the land and disrespect to indigenes are now orders of the day with visitors calling our once beautiful Lagos no man’s land.
“Really, is Lagos no man’s land? Yes, partly as laws are broken without corrective punitive measures, the yellow bus drivers never obey traffic lights and officers.
“They are laws on to themselves. Okada and Keke riders are the Kings and Queens of the roads always ready to insult and assault anyone who dares to correct them to ply the roads rightly,” Babarinde said.
He urged the Lagos State Ministry of Transport and Ministry of Environment to work in tandem to bring sanity back to Lagos.
“Our governor is a law-abiding man and an ardent believer in the rule of law. So, we (APC in diaspora) are ready to work with him to leave an indelible mark in Lagos for his name to be written in gold,” he said.
NAN
CREDIT: PM NEWS
