With the current bazaar of topical issues to pick on, I must selfishly, as is inherently human, dwell on an issue that could be dealt with another day; better still, an issue not as important as the insecurity situation in the country, and not as scary and disappointing as the President’s declaration in far-away Switzerland that indeed some 10 billion dollars remain unaccounted for; and that yes it is true, NNPC is fraught with you know what. My grouse is with the clampers that run the clamping system in the FCT, introduced by Bala Mohammed, the FCT Minister. They run and operate the pay as you park system which I can only guess, was set up to sanitise the way vehicles park in the FCT while billing us for that itinerary?
I can volunteer the model whereby a parking/billing system is set up to help regulate traffic. In that case, the agents or contractors that do the job, pay attention to gross misuse and abuse of the roads, especially, and especially the manner in which taxi and bus drivers constitute a nuisance on the roads, conjuring unnecessary traffic and hold ups and choke ups on major roads and junctions within the metropolis. In fact, the so called Abuja master plan is to blame considerably for this, but all the same, here we are.
Today alone, I have passed two different crowds of people gathered in the streets with a bunch of cars parked in some swirly manner; and behold a closer look always unveiled either road safety officials, or the park and pay tow trucks, struggling to sentence one person’s car or the other to their yard via their tow trucks. The week before, I had fallen a helpless victim of the clamping system which is being run in the most unholy, gruesome and unscrupulous manner. If I may politely ask, how do you get your car clamped while you are sitting in it for just a drop off of somebody, or how you get your car clamped and get billed whopping sums, ranging from 15, to 40 or 50 thousand naira? I will tell you how.
I went to Blueprint newspapers to retrieve a copy of the previous day’s publication while the driver that brought me to the newspaper’s office was seated in the car. I rousingly yelled across the street to him, asking him to get my phone from the car, which he obediently and spiritedly did. Immediately he had alighted from the car, an overzealous clamper suddenly appeared from beneath our car and before the driver could cross the street, and before I could shout Jupiter, the clamper was already trying to clamp our tyre. My driver raced back to stop the good clamper but all to no avail.
Awwal (the driver’s name) kept saying, ‘See me here now! See me here now! But the deed was done and we were culprits right before our own eyes. I did not have the money they suggested I had to pay and I humbly boarded a taxi drop to my friend’s office to beg for the N25,000 that I was eventually billed. In my head I asked myself, wouldn’t I have been better off with the N25,000 all to myself in my previously empty pockets?
Even abroad, tickets are waived, warnings are issued, and the officers are considerate and human, before they take certain actions against road and traffic offenders. It is Abuja street gist that these overzealous officers of the law (contractors actually) are in a rush to hit daily targets meted out to them by their superiors and so we have in the end, a crisis in our hands.
From the crowds of people I have passed today at different locations, I think it is time the director of transport had a word with these contractors, especially IPS (one of the company’s names), who seem to be on a trigger happy course, eager, ready and willing to clamp and clamp till they run out of clamps. From the way I saw the crises brewing, I think it wouldn’t be bad if the minister reviewed these contracts and perhaps downgraded or lowered the terms or conditions, guiding their daily operations. It wouldn’t be a bad idea if these highly spirited persons are channeled towards regulating the activities of the taxi and bus drivers that are responsible for the disarray on the streets, and not us, the helpless parkers of Abuja, who have to pay for parking in front of our rented residences.
