Contractors can do anything to penetrate seats of power, including the legally illegal. AKIN ADEWAKUN, BOLA BADMUS and KEHINDE AKINSEHINDE-JAYEOBA bring the inside story of a scam, being stealthily perpetrated.
No doubt, one of the primary reasons for introducing professional stickers is to ‘give away’ the carrier of such stickers as belonging to a particular profession. Interestingly, Lagos, being the nation’s commercial nerve centre, can be said to boast of a deluge of such stickers, usually pasted on car windscreens, to announce the profession such car owners belong.
However, beside serving the purpose of a status symbol, tales have been told of how such stickers had, in the past, been used to ‘bail’ out people from precarious situations. A story was once told of how a medical practitioner had to be flagged down at an accident scene, between Ibadan-Ikire Road, to help give a first aid medical attention to some accident victims, before proper medical attention could be administered to those victims.
“It was the sticker on the man’s windscreen that helped us in identifying him as a medical doctor and he had no choice than to stop and render medical assistance. He could have just driven off, but for the sticker that gave him away as one of those that ‘had solemnly sworn to preserve lives’,” stated Mr Olumide Hassan, while making his input on the issue of proliferation of professional stickers among car owners.
With such obvious advantage and others, no one would, ordinarily, want to query Nigerians’ penchant for professional stickers on their vehicles. But events, of late, have proven that not all those stickers truly reflect the professional background of the carrier and, as such, giving a closer look at some of these stickers may not be out of place.
For instance, checks within Lagos by Saturday Tribune, especially among car owners, revealed that a substantial number of such stickers are being used by non-members of the profession the stickers seem to be professing. Curiously, among the most abused are those of the media, the security agencies and the state government.
“Every Tom, Dick and Harry seem to be having one professional sticker or the other and unfortunately, many of them never belong to such professions,” lamented Afolabi Banjo (real names withheld), a worker at the Alausa Secretariat. According to Banjo, the car sticker issue is an interesting thing since it often times connotes a status symbol or a sort of prestige for bearers of such stickers.
“It is something that a lot of people do crave for notwithstanding that he or she does not qualify for it. To this end, some would not even mind how it is procured. They are always desperate to have it since they believe, with such stickers on their windscreens, their status symbols are enhanced and they can easily get away with some ‘crimes’ mere mortals would have been heavily sanctioned for,” he argued.
Banjo’s assertions may not be farther from the truth! For instance, in spite of the fact that there are stringent official rules guiding the issuance of the Lagos State government official car sticker, investigations by Saturday Tribune showed that those stickers still manage to get into the wrong hands, at a fee, hovering between N2,000 and N4,000, depending on how desperate the individual is to get same and the central syndicate is allegedly domiciled in the office of a top official.
Those, who volunteered information on the condition of anonymity, simply confirmed the fact that the stickers can be got for the asking, arguing that the stickers are always available for whoever is interested, but at a cost. “That’s is not a big deal”, said one of the respondents, a staff of the Lagos State government, working at the Alausa Secretariat, when asked how such sticker that would allow the ‘bearer’ a free entry and exit around the Government Secretariat, Alausa, Ikeja, can be obtained.
One of the respondents, who also would not want his name in print, due to the sensitivity of the subject, simply said, “I got mine for around N2,000 or thereabout, few years ago. I just approached a lady who introduced me to somebody who collected the money. The person eventually handed me the sticker without any sweat.”
Also another respondent when approached for information, simply said, “I was told it cost N3,000 to procure the sticker.” But when asked why officials of government would have to pay to obtain the stickers, he attributed the price tag being presently placed on the stickers to scarcity of such stickers and the cost of printing them. “It used to be free in the past”, he stated.
But easy as the process of getting such stickers at Alausa may seem, it takes an insider to liaise with the issuer of the stickers before such stickers are issued. For instance, none of the respondents could mention a particular government official in the agency or ministry responsible for the issuance of the stickers. It is always done by proxy by such government officials, obviously to avoid being trailed and nailed for this illegal action.
It has therefore been a situation of where some agents are in the field doing personal business on procuring the stickers for interested Lagosians, most of whom are not even qualified to have them, in the first place. But because of the personal advantage that they stand to gain in terms of escaping the eagle eye of the law in the state, they go to any length in order to procure the stickers.
Saturday Tribune however gathered that in the civil service, procurement of stickers is largely dependent on the clout of the person, seeking for the sticker. Mr Oladimeji Taofeek said he got his sticker from an uncle who was a director. This, he stated, sometimes had its consequences. He recounted an experience where the security agents at the secretariat apprehended him, having failed to produce a valid ID to support the sticker claim. He said it only took him time to put a call through to his uncle, who ordered the security man to let him be.
Oladimeji observed that in cases where eyebrows were raised regarding the illegal use of the Lagos State sticker, the fastest means to get out of the problem is to call a superior officer. According to him, those at the Office of the Head of Service were the ones that encourage the illegal use. He noted that in most cases, the family of the ‘bosses’ do have their own sticker which they use at will and, in most cases, they put any security official that deemed to accuse them of illegal usage into problems.
Surprisingly, this is not exclusive to Alausa, the state’s seat of power. A lot of other professions, including the military and even the media are guilty of this. Hassan, a retired military personnel, now into transport business in the state, still has an Army sticker firmly placed on his bus’ windscreen, despite having retired from the military. The sticker, he said, helps in ‘singling’ him out for some privileges. He neither pays dues to area boys, nor get harassed by agents of the state, especially men of the Lagos State Traffic Management Agency (LASTMA) and the Vehicle Inspection Officers (VIOs).
“Once a soldier always a soldier; I tagged the vehicle because I once served this country meritoriously and retired as a sergeant. I think your focus should be on those that neither went for any military work nor attended a military school, but still use the Army sticker on their vehicles,” he stated.
While Hassan may have hit the nail on the head, since some simply procure the stickers through relations and agents at some of these security agencies offices, the case of Ogbonna is different.
Ogbonna, an engineer in an offshore fabrication company who has the ‘M Navy’ sticker placed on the windscreen of his car, insists he secured his own on merit.
According to him, the sticker was actually secured after obtaining a certificate in Merchant Navy. This, he explained, entails going through a three-day course after paying the sum of N30,000, after which an identity card and a sticker are issued.
Ogbonna said the sticker had given him an edge with traffic controllers as he confessed being a perpetual traffic rules breaker. He however noted that there were cases he was stopped but released after presenting his ID. He disclosed that previous attempts at illegally getting the sticker proved abortive, as he was told that it would be illegal to parade oneself as a Merchant Navy personnel when he’s not.
He added that one of the ways an individual could obtain the sticker illegally could be through someone that actually attended the course, obtained the sticker and is ready to do away with it at a cost. According to him, some colleagues of his who went through the course gave away their stickers at a sum that was not disclosed. He, however, stated that such a practice had drastically reduced because some people ran into officers that demanded for their ID card, and failure to produce such usually attract severe punishment.
It is to be noted that the Merchant Navy has been declared illegal by security agencies, but those behind it are claiming that, though the bill to make the outfit legal is before the National Assembly, the Navy authorities have not stopped tagging it illegal.
Reacting, Captain Suleiman Dahun, the director of Naval Information, described the use of naval stickers by non-naval personnel as a “contravention of the federation’s regulation” and also stated that retired naval personnel are not allowed to use the stickers.
The Navy spokesperson also stressed that the use of naval sticker sis not a license for even serving personnel to flout the traffic and other laws of the land or to oppress other road users.
“It is a contravention of the federation regulation. You are not allowed to use the Nigerian Navy sticker if you are not a naval personnel. First and foremost, the fact that you have a Nigerian Navy sticker does not give you the license to drive dangerously or to flout traffic or other laws. Even if you are a personnel of the Nigerian Navy and you have the sticker on your windscreen, you cannot use that as an excuse or an opportunity to oppress others”, he said.
Speaking on the possibility of retired naval officers abusing the privilege of using such a sticker, Captain Dahun said, “they are not supposed to use it (sticker). Even if they do, that cannot be an excuse to drive where they are not supposed to or to flout traffic laws”.
However, Mr Jide Lawal, the Public Relations Officer in the office of the Head of Service, Lagos State government, did not respond to both several calls and SMS sent to his mobile phone by Saturday Tribune on the issue.