Some commuters in Badagry and its environs were on Monday, October 31, 2022, stranded as commercial bus (Danfo) drivers embarked on an indefinite strike, alleging arbitrary collection of levies from them by officials of Lagos State Motor Parks and Garage Management.
According to the NAN, commuters were seen waiting for buses to convey them to different destinations without success.
Mr Idowu Jimoh, a staff of the Public Complaints Commission (PCC) in Badagry said that he had waited for close to two hours at the roundabout for a bus to convey him to his office in Lagos.
He appealed to the Lagos State government and aggrieved transporters to resolve the issue amicably for peace to reign.
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According to Jimoh, when two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers, so it is the masses that are suffering for what they don’t know.
The situation was the same at Mowo bus stop, MTN bus stop, Ibile bus stop, Magbon bus stop, Churchgate and Agbara.
At Mowo bus stop, tricycles, known as Keke Maruwa, and commercial motorcycles were on the ground to convey stranded commuters to their various destinations.
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Mrs Elizabeth Ojo, a foodseller who was going to the market, said the tricycle drivers had increased the transport fare by 50 per cent due to the strike by the commercial bus drivers.
Ojo urged the government to meet the people and resolve it before it goes out of hand.
Meanwhile, Mr Taofeek Hassan, the Assistant Secretary, of the Joint Drivers’ Welfare Association of Nigeria in a telephone interview, said that commercial bus drivers would not go back to work unless the government intervened.
According to him, the bus drivers left the road because of the extortion of their people by the park managers.
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“When the National Union of Road Transport Workers was created, the union was created to represent the commercial bus drivers, but now, things have changed,” he said.
According to him, the park managers were eating fat from commercial drivers who were working daily but had nothing to show for all their work.
“So, we left the road because we don’t want their troubles. The government should listen to us, we don’t want them on our road again,” he said.
He said that the association had given them more than seven days’ notice, adding that they should have resolved the matter before they started the strike.
Hassan urged the commercial bus drivers to sit at home and avoid trouble with the park managers who, he alleged, were moving from one bus stop to another, looking for trouble.