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LASTMA, Viju officials clash leaves 10 injured
Tuesday's fight between some Viju Company and Lagos State Traffic Management Authority officials broke out in the Oba Akran Avenue neighbourhood of Ikeja, the state capital, causing chaos.
The incident happened at midnight, and the victims suffered multiple injuries.
It was also discovered that several of the motorboys employed by the Viju Company had been stabbed in the hands, and one of them had been shot.
The LASTMA officials and Viju workers were shown in a video sent to our correspondent as injured victims with blood on their faces, hands, and clothes.
Seyi, a driver at Viju, claimed that touts, LASTMA officials, and soldiers had come to impounded their trucks at midnight and had stabbed him in the hand when he had retaliated.
We were unaware of anything as we slept on top of the truck. A group of boys were yelling that the cars had already been parked. We went up to them and inquired as to why they would be impounding cars at strange times. There were up to one hundred LASTMA officials, soldiers, and touts present. They stabbed my back with an axe when I made the decision to fight back. The presence of soldiers for this kind of operation surprised me.
Issa Tijani, a different Viju official, claimed that they had threatened to send the detained people to Kirikiri Prison, adding that they must pay N700,000 to free their vehicles.
"They not only raided Viju Company, but the entire neighbourhood," he declared. I'm curious how they knew that the individuals involved were Viju employees. The problem at hand is that, first of all, they are unsure if those guys are the ones, so they told them they would take all those guys to Kirikiri Prison without any justification. They also told them to come and bail their cars for N700,000, which is suspicious given that they arrived at midnight. I don't think that's fair. They shattered a bottle on my head as well.
Ismalia Asuma, a driver for Viju Company, stated, "I did not do anything for the LASTMA officials." We were resting atop trucks when they came to raid. They came with soldiers, the task force, and ‘agberos’ (touts) to attack them. They even shot me in the back because I did not do anything.
When contacted, Adebayo Taofeeq, the Public Relations Officer for LASTMA, stated that 54 cars had been impounded in the area at around 12 a.m. and that the residents had filed a petition complaining about Viju trucks obstructing the road.
"The drivers of the Viju milk trucks are obstructing traffic on both sides of the road and converting the dual lane into a single lane, as per a petition that we received from the locals. We even sent the Lagos State Parking Authority a petition. We took action at the request of Sola Giwa, the Honourable Special Advisor on Transportation. We were able to remove 54 trucks on April 23 by midnight by arriving there.
He continued by saying that five people had been taken into custody after some miscreants attacked agency representatives.
"They proceeded to mobilise miscreants from the Agege area after we finished that assignment, which led to the injuries of seven of our officials. We only used tear gas, and we're not sure if the task force members were there. Our men did not use any guns at all.
"During the enforcement operations, 54 Viju milk trucks were evacuated while LASTMA operational vehicles were vandalised. Together with LASTMA, the police detained five of these people (Falomo Oluwafemi, Afeniyi Stephen, Olamide Adekunle, Chukwu Guaja Eze, and Adeshina Sulaimon) and confiscated a number of weapons, including cutlasses, iron rods, broken bottles, charms, and knives.
"The wounded LASTMA officers received quick medical attention and were transported to the hospital." As a warning to others, the government would bring charges against the people who were arrested, according to Hon. Sola Giwa, the governor's special adviser on transportation.
As of the time this was filed, Gbadeyan Abdulraheem, the Director of Press and Public Affairs for the Lagos State Taskforce, had not returned calls or messages left on his phone, so all attempts to get a response from him had failed.