By our correspondent
Have you ever been to any of Nigerian borders before especially Idiroko, Seme and Ilorin borders in Ogun, Lagos and Kwara States respectively? You will mistaken the roads leading to the borders for toll gates.
You will come across all the law enforcement agencies including the ones that don’t seem to have any business on that axis.
Ordinarily, the roads are supposed to be manned by the Nigeria Custom Service, NCS to monitor struggling; Nigeria Immigration Service to guard against illegal immigrants and probably the Police to checkmate the activities of criminals but that is not the case.
Also, because of the insecurity in the country currently, the military men were also sighted at different checkpoints.
However, the activities of NSCDC are not understood. They are set up to monitor vandalism but they seem to have delved into monitoring smuggling when we have the Customs in place. Even if they are monitoring the activities of smugglers of petroleum products, that could be done around Sango Ota or Owode Onirin.
Of course, the Federal Road Safety Corps are known to always be on the road but not very close to the border. Yes, the presence of their men are needed on the highways and expressways to reduce or avoid road accidents but not around the borders. Also not left out are the Directorate of Road Traffic Service, otherwise known as VIO, SON, just to mention a few. The only outfit that was missing are the Department of State Security.
However, there is nothing wrong with having all the security personnel on the roads leading to the borders but the worrisome aspect is the competition amongst them.
All the aforementioned don’t seem to be checking anything, as they are more interested in extortion. And those who are afraid of being caught by perceived government agencies, use some boys in those communities to collect ransom from motorists.
They see extortion as their right hence it is compulsory otherwise they will delay the motorists especially commercial drivers who refuse to part with some money by telling them to park by the road side.