Lagosians are not alien to the menace of street urchins popularly known as Area Boys, but the latest dimension to the infamous activities of scoundrels in the state has thrown most residents into panic with all attention turning to the state government to see how it will rein in this fledgling monster before it fully bare its fangs on residents in the state.
Driving in most parts of the state has never been an easy task as motorists have a number of challenges, including gridlocks, poor state of the roads in some parts, harassment by ubiquitous uniformed personnel, as well as the endless extortions on commercial bus operators by narky road union workers popular known as Agbero. Perhaps more worrisome is the latest dimension of extortions by street urchins of stranded motorists in the state.
One of the latest victims of this form of extortion by miscreants in the state is Mr Abdulateef Soyemi, whose vehicle suddenly developed a fault along the old Abeokuta Road in Agege area of state.
Soyemi told Sunday Sun that he was heading for Ilupeju when his vehicle suddenly malfunctioned. “I left the car by the roadside to search for an automobile mechanic. As I was returning with the mechanic, I observed that some people had clustered around my car.
“Before getting close to them, the young mechanic informed me that they wouldn’t allow him to work on the car unless I settled with them. I asked him why I would have to settle them and he replied that that was the latest development in the state. True to his words, I parted with N4,000 before they permitted him to fix the car,” he recalled.
Also, it almost took a violent turn before Mr Nichola Omachi, another resident of Lagos, had a change of heart to give Caesar his due.
Like Soyemi, Omachi was returning from Mushin in the company of one of his friends to his Alagbado residence one afternoon when his vehicle suddenly grounded to a halt before Oshodi.
Moments after getting a mechanic to work on the faulty car, a gang of street urchins swarmed round him to demand for money.
A perplexed Omachi said that he was still trying to figure out why he had to pay them by asking one of them what the money was meant for when his impatient friend suddenly engaged in hot altercations with one of them.
But for the mechanic, who obviously was aware of this illegal practice and the consequence of daring these hoodlums, Omachi and his friend would probably have had it worse than just parting with money to them.
“While my friend engaged in a shouting match with one of them, the young mechanic called me back and advised me to give them something, saying that is the practice. Until that day I had never had such experience. It was after the incident that I started to hear from people who had had similar experience in the past,” Mr Omachi revealed.
By conceding to ‘settle’ these gangsters, Soyemi and Omachi saved themselves from a bigger headache.
Findings by Sunday Sun revealed that most motorists who refuse to cooperate with these hoodlums stand the risk of getting their vehicles vandalized in addition to being rough handled by these miscreants.
An auto electrician, Afolabi Sunday, said that he lost his working tools to these touts on one occasion when one of his clients refused to settle them when they accosted the vehicle owner and demanded money for repairing his car in their zone.
Afolabi said that he was accompanying the owner of the vehicle to Ladipo Spareparts Market to purchase a vehicle part when the vehicle developed a fault along Capitol Road.
“As I was working on the vehicle, some boys, about seven or eight, emerged from nowhere. I took them for granted by continuing to work on the vehicle on the assumption that the man would settle them and allow them to go. But he did no such thing. Rather, he threatened to get them arrested and this led to a major brawl with the man.
“In a short while, one of them smashed one of the side mirrors and before we could say jack, they all disappeared. By the time the dust would settle, I discovered that they had made away with my tools while the man also lost his phone,” Afolabi revealed.
Those who are familiar with this ugly trend liken it to the menace of Omo Onile, which the government has relatively succeeded in checking haven plagued the state for a long time.
These miscreants, Sunday Sun gathered, often claim to be street lords of their area of operations and will, therefore, demand to be paid for ‘securing’ the area.
A resident and community leader at Oko Oba Agege, who pleaded anonymity, described the trend as a time bomb capable of consuming the state if not accorded the urgent attention it requires.
According to him, “the trend is not a new development to people like us who live in this part of the state. But most people think it’s new because it is now getting more rampant and happening in several other parts of the state. I, as a person, have fallen victim a couple of times. These boys will only ask you for money during the day time. But at night, it will be outright robbery; they will take anything and everything they can take, including the removable part of your car such as the car battery.”
The source suggested that this criminal trend is better tackled by community policing which many have advocated.
“It is always easy to blame the police for every form of crime in society. But this particular crime is better dealt with by the community itself. These boys (criminals) are well known in the community. They are always careful to make sure that their victims don’t know them. If a vehicle breaks down now they will first send one of them to find out the identity of the owner. If their emissary comes back to inform them that the person is a known face, they will steer clear. But if the person is a stranger, they will march down to the place and extort the person,” he said.
Apart from extorting stranded motorists, Sunday Sun gathered that these miscreants have other approaches.
One of them is to beg their victims for money. They follow their would-be-victim begging and praying simultaneously in similar ways beggars do until they get what they want.
Sometimes, they turn back if their persistence yields no result. On some occasions, however, they might decide to resort to verbal abuse of their victims, who risk being attacked and robbed especially in isolated areas, if such person attempts to reply to them.
Areas notorious for this tactics, according to sources, include Agege, Toll-Gate, Iyana Ipaja, Mushin, among others.
Similarly, there has been an uproar among residents who had been compelled to pay ‘ransom’ to get their phones returned to them after their phones had been forcefully taken away from them.
A video clip which lends credence to this claim trended recently with many residents confirming the veracity of this claim.
A security expert, Folarin Awofisibe, described this development as worrisome and called for increasing policing of the state.
“This is another indication that there is a need to beef up the security architecture not only in the state, but across Nigeria.
“The hardship in the country is piling more pressure on our security system and except the government shows more will power in addressing the security challenge, criminals will continue to devise new approaches such as this,” Awofisibe said, adding that, “the current calls for multi-layer security system, will go a long way in easing the nation’s security challenge if acceded to.”
Via The Sun