How touts give motor park workers bad name

• Commuters, drivers in Lagos, Taraba, Abia narrate ugly experiences

From Enyeribe Ejiogu, Olakunle Olafioye (Lagos) and Ighomuaye Lucky (Benin) Scholastica Onyeka (Makurdi), Oluseye Ojo (Ibadan), Sola Ojo (Kaduna) and Okey Sampson (Umuahia)

An average Nigerian who had boarded a commercial vehicle at a motor park in any state, particularly in the urban centres, will readily remember his or her interactions with the men who operate at those parks.

They, indeed, play the role of filling the vehicles with passengers, collecting the fares and loading luggage into the vehicles, as well as ensuring that they are dispatched promptly.

Most of the time, these men are members of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), which is a largely well organised and structured body registered by the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) and affiliated to the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC).

Again, to a large extent, members of the NURTW operate in responsible manner in many states of the federation, but their ilk in Lagos, Taraba and Abia states are a different kettle of fish.

They go about their activities in a hard and aggressive manner that can easily escalate to violence with the commuters. These attributes have made residents of the states who depend on commuter vehicles to get around the state to regard the NURTW members known in local parlance as Agbero, as a menace to the commuters.

In other states where the NURTW has local chapters, how do their members operate? Sunday Sun in this report on selected cities across the country presents an answer to this question.

LAGOS

In Lagos, commercial vehicle operators have characterised the relationship between them and the state chapter of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), which now operates under the Lagos State Parks and Garages Management Committee, as purely parasitical. They say that the endless extortion which the horde of rank-and-file members of the Lagos NURTW, popularly known as Agbero, subject them to in the state is inimical to the commercial drivers and their bus conductors on one hand and the commuters on the other hand. The immediate effect is that commuters bear the brunt of the horrendous extortions of commuter bus operators by the Agbero.

They are, therefore, vehement in their call for the abrogation of the union, which they claimed, has brought endless hardship on commuter bus operators and commuters in the state.

A commercial driver, Mr Lateef Hassan, told Sunday Sun that commercial bus drivers in parts of Lagos recently protested against the activities of the union in order to call the attention of the state government to the untold hardship the activity of the union was causing road transporters in the state.

“What the Agberos are doing to us is worse than armed robbery. At least one is certain that armed robbery attacks don’t happen every day, but here in Lagos, Agbero assault us from bus stop to bus stop on daily basis,” Hassan said.

He explained that they pay between N10,000 to N15,000 every day to the union, adding that the development was indirectly affecting them negatively.

“If you leave home at 4:30 a.m as a driver and return at midnight you cannot be sure of making N10, 000 for your daily toil, but somebody will sit somewhere and direct his boys to forcefully collect everything you have struggled to make in a day. By the time you calculate what you part away with as dues to Agbero you would have spent between N10, 000 and N15, 000 on a daily basis. The majority of the union boys you see at motor parks and bus stops are former bus conductors, who decided to ditch being bus conductors to become Agbero because they consider the latter more rewarding and lucrative.

“They (NURTW) are not adding any value to us. Rather, they are there to milk us dry and make sure we don’t go home with anything at the end of the day,” he said.

Another commercial bus driver, Tony, described the Agberos in Lagos as agents of the state government, saddled with the responsibility of collecting free and illegal dues for the state government.

“You, as a journalist, I am sure you belong to a union which must be responsible and responsive to you in one area or the other. But commercial drivers are not getting any benefit from Agbero. Instead, they inflict pains and hardship on us (drivers and bus conductors). The government continues to support them because they are the ones they are using to get illegal dues, which they cannot justifiably request from commercial bus owners. They also deploy them to perpetrate all manner of electoral criminality in the state during election periods like we saw during the last elections in the state. This explains the reason the government continues to support them despite the anger and the outrage of members of the public against them,” he said.

EDO

Unlike in Lagos State, where touts carry the appellation Agbero, Edo State is somewhat blessed and shielded from the menace of Agbero as there is a well coordinated structure of operations at the various parks in the state.

The state chairman of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), Odion Olaye, said that his union works with the Road Transporters Employers Association of Nigeria (RTEAN) and other relevant bodies of the government to ensure seamless operation in the state.

“Edo State has been very peaceful under my leadership. In Edo State, we have two bodies recognized by the state government, NURTW, and  RTEAN.

“These are the ones the government is working with. And before your members must go to the motor parks to collect revenue, he or she must have been trained by the state government for the period of one or two months.

“The reason is that, we do not collect money as revenue. The Revenue Collectors, popularly known as RC from the local government areas, are the ones collecting money on behalf of their councils, on behalf of the Edo State government, on behalf of the NURTW and RTEAN.

“And our members are there only to enforce, to talk to our drivers who are our members. And as soon as they load, they say pay, they will pay to the RC because before Governor Obaseki came on board, the RC used to be at a loggerheads with the drivers, but since we came with this new system, once the members of the NURTW stand in Park A by the gate if the driver is going out, they will call RC, pay to him and as they are paying that money, they are using mobile app and the money goes straight to the government’s treasury.

“And at the end of the month, we take record of our own, the two unions, and the council will take their own record and Edo Revenue Service (ERS) oversees this collection and at the end of the month, they give everybody his share.

“ So, that is the system we operate in Edo State and it has given us peace and we are happy with the system,” Olaye said.

Corroborating the NURTW’s chairman claim, Road Transport Employers Association of Nigeria, Edo State branch, Charles Momoh, said that the harmonious relationship that existed among all the unions in the state have actually kept the issues of “Agberos” causing nuisance in the various parks out of the state.

BENUE

In the food basket of the nation, Benue State, for the past few years, there have been instances of unrest that could be traced to unruly activities of motor park touts, popularly called Agbero in other states.

Sunday Sun investigation around the state capital showed the word ‘Agbero’ is alien to the people of the state.

“We only hear that in places like Lagos, where  they really constitute a nuisance to the point that they scare you from using some parks,” a passenger said in Makurdi.

But, some others said that the activities of NURTW have not for once disrupted the peace of the state.

“Depending on the park and time you travel, you only see the garage boys running after you as you go close to the park, with each struggling to either collect your luggage or persuade you to travel with their vehicle.

“And when you settle for one or walks into the park you want, the others leave you alone. We don’t see that attitude of the Lagos Agbero in them as we find in other states, where they will snatch your bags, disappear, and God help you if they are not criminals, you will only find your luggage by His grace,” a woman who sells snacks at NURTW park in Wurukum area of Makurdi said.

“If you have many luggage, the barrow boys are also handy to help take you into or out of the park for a fee. No harassment or anything. But you only need to be watchful and follow behind since you can’t trust anyone,” another resident said at Lafia park in Makurdi.

Speaking with the Sunday Sun, the Secretary of NURTW in Benue State, Comrade Damian Akintola, stated that the name ‘Agbero’ is the creation of the society to vilify or downgrade the driving profession.

Akintola who spoke passionately about his members described their job as a noble profession, dismissing the insinuation that all drivers and their supportive staff are nothing but never-do-well in the society.

While admitting that there is no organization without bad eggs in its fold, Akintola stated that the union in Benue State should not be likened to what operates in Lagos and other states in the southern part of the country, where Agberos have become a menace to the people, forcing  governments in the affected states to contend with them.

He explained that because the union in Benue holds its passengers in high esteem, it has a constitution that regulates the activities of his members and also ensures that offenders are not spared, but dealt with or shown the way out.

He said that the union does not tolerate any form of insubordination, explaining, “once we hear report of such case of our members not treating our passengers well, it will not go well with that person. So to a large extent, our members are well behaved which is why most of the parks especially within Makurdi, you will always see our men there in uniform. Those are our members identified as working for us at the unit level; where the loading of the vehicles takes place in the motor park.

“For the past three years that I have been in Benue State, I have not received any reported case of our members constituting a menace,” he said.

He said that the NURTW in Benue works in synergy with all the relevant security agencies, relevant organizations that have to do with transportation, adding that “so far so good, they have been able to bring sanity to the system and have not had any reported case of any of our member manhandling any of our passengers.”

The union secretary called on intending passengers to report to their office if they have issues with how they are handled at the parks, saying identified members found wanting would be used to deter others.

TARABA

Just like they are in some other parts of the country, motor park touts in Taraba State are a nightmare to motorists and travellers. Most of them double as petty thieves and drug peddlers.

In Jalingo, the Taraba State capital, most of the touts who operate in the various parks are not even members of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), thereby making monitoring their actions a major challenge.

“Here, most of the boys just come in and plead with you to allow them to load passengers and luggage for the drivers for a fee and to hustle passengers for us also for a fee. So, I selected a few of them, who we operate with and I monitor their activities closely.

“I warned them that if any of them misbehaves, I will dismiss all of them so they exercise some level of caution in their operations. For instance, if you harass a passenger, you are fired. So, they tread with care.

“Even at that, we have had cases that gave us headache with some of them. You have instances when passengers prefer giving them their waybill rather than bringing the waybill to the front desk, where they will be duly registered and taken care of. Typically, if anything goes wrong, it falls back to us despite the fact that we had stopped them from taking waybills without the knowledge of the management.

“The problem is that, if you have issues with them and they run away, there is very little you can do. For those working for me, I have established a certain level of rapport with them that I know a few things about them. So, I am comfortable with them.

“And they certainly are no threat to passengers because if any stuff belonging to a passenger goes missing at their instance, they will pay through their noses. “

Some drivers have, however, had nasty experiences with some of the touts especially in the semi-urban areas of the state.

Malam Sule plies the Jalingo/Bali route as a commercial driver and has been in the business for nearly three decades, and almost a decade of that time spent in Taraba State. He had an encounter with some men of the NURTW that left much to be desired.

“I was on my way to Bali to drop a chemical that one of my customers asked me to buy and bring for him. I loaded my taxi with the chemicals even on the seats. On my way, I met another driver whose car broke down in Maihula and he came to buy some parts in Jalingo.

“When we got to the outskirts of the town where his car and the mechanics were, I stopped and dropped him. It was free. I did not take anything from him because he is a fellow driver like me. To my utmost surprise, some touts came just when I started to leave and threw nails in front of me. One of my tires got terribly bad. They said they were members of NURTW. I told them what happened, but they insisted that I was supposed to enter the garage rather than dropping passengers by the roadside.

“Before the officials of NURTW in Maihula that I contacted could arrive, the boys started a physical fight and ended up leaving with some containers of the chemicals, after destroying my tire. At the end, we could not trace them because they were not registered members of the union,” Sule recounted in pain.

For Mr Albert Ulega, a seasoned transporter based in Jalingo, the activities of motor park touts is less organized in the state and so less vicious, compared to other clans where they are either full members of NURTW or other bodies that give them cover to operate with impunity.

Basically, most Agberos in Jalingo and by extension, Taraba, are young people who are mostly unschooled and looking for a means to earn a daily bread. Most of them engage in helping to load and offload buses and trucks, and to hustle passengers for the various transporters for a fee.

Some, however, indulge in petty stealing and once in a while, harass a motorist, especially one that is not very familiar with the terrain, to make some quick dirty money off them. It is also on record that some of them even go as far as trading in illicit drugs or facilitating the movements of the same, using their familiarity with the system.

OYO

In Oyo State, the activities of National Union of Road Transport Workers were suspended in the state, shortly after the state governor, Seyi Makinde, took over the reins of power in May 2019.

The administration, however, came up with an initiative to manage the public transportation sub-sector. The Park Management System (PMD) was introduced, and a former factional chairman of NURTW in the state, Alhaji Mukaila Lamidi, fondly called ‘Auxiliary’, was appointed as the Chairman, Disciplinary Committee of the PMS, in the entire state.

Sunday Sun gathered that the government also constituted PMS committee for each of the 33 local government areas of the state. They PMS committees  at the local government  level are directly responsible to the state chairman of the disciplinary committee of PMS.

The committees are the ones ensuring collection of money, including sales of tickets to commercial cars and buses across the state. The management of the various bus terminals in the state has also been handed over to the PMS, but with the involvement of consultants to the government.

The majority of the PMS committee members, as gathered, are owners of buses and commercial cars, which they have been driving either by themselves,  or that they gave to other people to drive for them, with agreements that they must make returns every evening.

It was gathered further that people that are not members of PMS would not be allowed to sell tickets and collect money from commercial drivers. But visits to some parks showed that some drivers always do not want to pay money or obtain tickets from PMS. They would love to circumvent the process. But the committee members would ensure that the driver does the right thing, though with measured excesses on some occasions.

In a recent press statement, the Chairman of the Disciplinary Committee of PMS in the state, Lamidi stated that the motor parks regulatory body has been a source of revenue to the state government. He alleged that during the era of the proscribed NURTW, all revenues generated from motor parks and garages across the state were shared among its leaders with nothing given to the state government.

He added that it was this culture that has long depleted government’s revenue, but noted that PMS has continued to remit revenues generated to the state coffers since its creation which has also translated to evenly spread infrastructural development across the geopolitical zones in the state.

The PMS boss stated that other states, including Lagos, Ondo, and Ekiti, have emulated Oyo State in adopting the park management system can attest to the improvement in their revenue generation base, while crimes emanating from hooliganism and thuggery at motor parks and garages have since been reduced.

KEBBI

In Kebbi, there is no presence of Agberos in motor parks across the 21 local government areas of the state. The major motor parks are controlled by officials of NURTW and National Association of Road Transport Owners (NARTO).

Investigations in Sabo Tarsa (New Garage) in Birnin Kebbi, the Kebbi State capital, showed that passengers usually come to the park to board vehicles to the various states, towns and villages without any disturbance by members of the transport union.  They only meet officials of the unions who attend to the various units to ensure proper arrangements and accountability.

An officer of NURTW, Mallam Dan Musa, explained that in the state, they operate in accordance with their union’s guidelines and they don’t give room for any agents or park touts.

“At the level of NURTW, we don’t have Agberos here. Even our colleagues in NARTO and RTEAN, you can’t find Agberos in their midst. We are organised unions and will not condone anybody that will tarnish our image,” he said.

KADUNA

Kaduna is seemingly blessed in that the state is free of the menace of Agbero as it is in Lagos and Anambra states, as well as some other states. That is the submission of the Secretary, National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), Kaduna State, Comrade Bature Yusuf Suleiman, who stated that the union doesn’t engage the services of thugs in its parks across the state.

He added that the union doesn’t identify with any political party, but respects, cooperates, and works with the government in power, to ensure a peaceful atmosphere, to enable the government to deliver dividends of democracy to the citizens.

He said: “We don’t register anybody who doesn’t have a valid driver’sg license as our member. That means we register only driver’s as our members except in cases where you lost your vehicle to circumstances beyond you and we were able to establish that fact, we can allow you to remain with us for survival. Such drivers are allowed to assist their colleagues to load their vehicles so they can get something to fall back on pending the time that they will get back on their feet. We do this as brothers because no one knows tomorrow. They are also there as reserve drivers in case the owners are indisposed.

“Our members are always in uniform because they also serve as security. If not, we will not allow you to work with us. We maintain sanity as much as possible. Our members don’t go about harassing Nigerians on the road.

“You don’t see our members engage one another in physical combat or harassment as seen in other places because they are drivers, who must respect other drivers. Any driver behind the steering must be respected because of our slogan that says “Tires roll, driver chops,” which means those on the steering are the ones bringing something for you to eat, you must respect that.

“As a part of an effort to maintain sanity, we don’t allow drugs in our parks. We don’t also allow it near where we are operating. This is why we are working with security agents to make sure our parks are sanitised. We don’t want it at all.

“In  Kaduna, we are in a good working relationship with the Kaduna State Transport Regulatory Authority (KADSTRA). We do registration and even hold seminars with them from time to time. So, we don’t have a problem with the state government.

“This is because once you identify with a political party, you must have opposition and no matter how good your intentions are, you will be seen as opposition. If you want to do politics, go in your name, not the union’s.

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Anywhere you see road transport workers misbehaving, they are loyal to someone in government who gives them cover.

“For example, during the recently concluded elections, PDP came and we endorsed them. APC came and we endorsed them and so we did to all the political parties that came to us. Don’t also forget that we were the ones that moved sensitive materials from one place to the other during the election. So, how can we be a partisan union?”

Corroborating the NURTW scribe in Kaduna, Manager, Kaduna State Transport Authority (KSTA), Kano Line, Ngwan Sarki, Kaduna, Mustapha Babayaro said, the word ‘Agbero’ in name and character is alien to the state.

“Here, we don’t have ‘agbero’, we only have a loading company fully registered with Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) which is responsible for our loading activities in all our parks.

“The company is responsible for training and retraining these loaders who are educated enough to operate smartphones and other computers. They are responsible for our e-ticketing section.

“They are not members of the NURTW. They have their uniforms and other identification tags. They are well-organised and responsible people who respect travelers and other motorists they come in contact with,” he said.

ABIA

In Abia, touts of different colours and callings prance the state’s landscape particularly the cities like wounded African lions, voraciously preying on their victims with military precision, and in the process, making life hellish for the motoring public in particular and residents of the state in general.

Although, they may not be as menacing in their actions as their ‘siblings’ in Lagos, but they are practically on all fours deadly.

Let’s check this out. Sometime last year, articulated vehicle drivers for eight days running, blocked the Aba axis of the Enugu/Port Harcourt expressway in protest.

One of the major reasons for the protest that paralyzed economic activities in the area was the activities of touts who the drivers alleged extort money from them in the guise of collecting revenue for the Abia State government even when it was 12 midnight.

“They (the touts) have the fee they said is for Board of Internal Revenue (BIR), after paying that, they will ask us to pay for daily ticket, before you know it, they will ask you to pay for obstruction. When you park vehicle where you are offloading, the touts masquerading as revenue agents will come and impound it”, one of the drivers said.

Hear another driver: “If we get to the town eventually, touts will be disturbing us with all sorts of levies. We are calling on touts in Aba, to leave articulated vehicle drivers alone so we can do our business without much suffering”.

A leader of the NURTW in the state who would not want his name in print for fear of being victimized, said that the touts who claim they work for the state government, have no affinity with the NURTW.

“Those touts you are talking about are not our members. They claim to be working for the state government and they believe they are above the law. But those who are under us, we control them effectively”.

Despite claims by the state government of checkmating the actives of touts in Abia, they are still having a field day in the state and having residents at their mercy.