What Difference is There Between Police and Toll Gates?

It's no longer news that toll gates in Nigeria have been removed a couple of years back by OBJ's government, ostensibly to alleviate the financial hardship being imposed on the general public by the tolls. At the time, government rationalised that the removal of tolls on Federal roads will help reduce transportation cost in the country. As usual, it is one of those short-sighted Greek gifts that successive governments in the country are wont to force down the throats of ordinary folks who are not fortunate enough to be in government.

Two days ago, I was forced to wonder again whether toll gates have actually been removed in Nigeria or whether the duty of toll collection has been transferred to the police.

Picture taken at a Police checkpoint along Otukpa-Obollo road;
a few poles to the Enugu State border

The picture here is that of a Mobile police man blocking the way of a heavy duty trailer because the driver refused to pay the mandatory one thousand naira that others paid. This was around 3.15 am. I wish someone can make the picture clearer. Armed with a mobile phone and sitting disappointedly in a immobile vehicle from around 2.30am to 6.00 am on that fateful day, I witnessed as these men made approximately 50,000 naira.

The weather was too cold! I couldn't even leave my own vehicle. There were three of them, one was dozing heavily in their pick-up truck parked beside the road. The other two had empty bottles of beer beside them, and later on I could make out the outline of the crate of beer which they carefully kept by the shrubs beside their seats. They had plastic chairs and apart from their bullet-proof vests, they were dressed for the very cold wind that was blowing that early morning. What I am trying to describe here is that these folks were obviously not doing this business for the first time nor the last.

Small cars were made to pay 200 naira, overloaded buses pay 500 naira or less depending on the bargaining power of the driver. They even gave "change" very openly! You could see wads of note on their hands while their guns were permanently hanging from their shoulders; no threat to anyone.

What is alarming is that in spite of the threat of terrorism in the country especially one harboured by southerners that a large cache of IEDs might find their ways south, these security officers were unperturbed. Their business was to collect money without checking the content of the vehicles. The only thing these commuters had that interested these new toll-takers was the money in their pocket. One driver who was there with 700 naira and begging them to collect it because it was all he had on him. They asked him to call his company. Even though this young man swore countless times in God's name (in Arabic); they still did not allow him to go. He spent the better part of two hours there. He could only leave when he eventually went to the lorry and produced the 300 naira balance.

Before you start blaming the police, let's take a look again at the society that produces this kind of heartless men. What kind of leaders do we have? The thousands of naira these men make is not for them, but for their superior officers who at that time of the day will be sleeping off excess wine and debauchery they must have consumed with their lords, the politicians. Am I surprised that a government that says it is responsible is planning to spend 5 billion naira in rehabilitating prostitutes! Chei! Either these people are animals or it is we the led that have cotton wool for brains!