Unknown to the general public, the rivalry between the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) and the Lagos State Traffic Management Authority (LASTMA) transcends political power play between the Federal and Lagos State Government. Curiously, the present FRSC Lagos Sector Commander, Mr. Ayobami Omiyale is actually the brain behind the formation of LASTMA and LAMATA. Somehow, things went awry between him and the State Government, after he had made recommendations on the agencies formation.
At that time, he was out of FRSC. Five years after, he is back on the beat. But ironically, the FRSC that he leads in Lagos is now engaged in a battle of wits with two state agencies he helped create. In an interview with Sunday Vanguard, he speaks on this and other issues. Excerpts:
YOU are back in Lagos to the office you left five years ago, could you tell us what it has been like in terms of the challenges between when you were away and now that you are back in Lagos?
The challenges, no doubt, have increased enormously, the staff that I used to know are now better paid, their standard of living has improved, they no longer fear as it were, the code of conduct regulations. They are matured in age, to that extent they have become a little bit stiff. But then, I also was not stagnant while I was out of FRSC., I moved from one job to the other, my clientele increased which included blue chip companies and multi-nationals which meant that as a consultant you have to give them the very best, that but for any drilling in FRSC, otherwise, that would be the last time you would do something for them.
Their standard is so high their taste bud is also high. So, I did not find the challenges here too hard when I came back the second time. In fact, they are 90 per cent of what I was doing while I was away. Therefore your livelihood depended on the type of services you rendered. I was consulting for transport organizations and I will say I was recognized by the World Bank which is a long story, but I do not intend to generate any unnecessary reactions from certain quarters. So these were the things I was doing which of course sharpened my experiences and skills and this of course assisted me when I came back
In other words, while you were away from the FRSC, you were into road safety management consultancy?
I engaged in training of drivers in multinationals and blue chip companies including dry and wet haulage drivers. I engaged in training of traffic control officers in local governments, eight local government councils to be precise. I also consulted for Lagos State Government and for Julius Berger, and I also consulted for urban mass transit associations, some of the officials of the World Bank were here and we had fruitful discussions, and I gave them several documents including the Federal Highway Code which they confessed they never knew existed and national traffic laws.
They took these documents in order to enable them assist the Lagos State Government on the LAMATA Project. At a stage, I was invited to be their local consultant to LAMATA in addition to foreign experts. I gave them pro-forma invoices on the kind of buses they wanted to use. They were to take off first with LASTMA, then LAMATA. So, I should say I have a better understanding of urban transport management. So, it means that what I’m doing now is a continuation of what I did for companies and governments, so which means that the five years that I was away was not lost.
As at the time you were leaving, the road safety was independent, between the time you were out and came back, it went through two stages of transformation, it was under the police and was pulled out when you were just coming in. Even though you were out during this time, how did it fare between that time and now?
How we fared can be seen through what the staff were saying. As you rightly noted, I left before the merger and I came back after the de-merger. The same thing with my boss, he left before the merger and returned after the de-merger. So there is little to be said about this period which people have referred to as the locust years. The staff were suffering at that time. But I must say that this is personal view, not necessarily the official position of the commission and I think it should be reported like that.
You were in Lagos as the FRSC sector commander, then five years after, you are back, how would you assess the traffic situation in Lagos. Has there been any improvement, has it deteriorated. How would you compare the two periods.
You are asking me to assess my performance, only an egocentric person would do that, but in order not to disappoint you altogether, I have already told you that on May 29, 1999 when Governor of Lagos State was being sworn in, he pledged to free the traffic in Lagos, he was relying on nobody else but me, because he had consulted me privately to do a research and find out how best Lagos traffic could be freed.
I did not disappoint him, but the implementation of the 507 recommendations I gave the government has been faulty, at best haphazard, and that in turn over a period of time has created apathy, high handedness, ineffectiveness and I am sorry to say, decay of the goals and aspirations for which the research was conducted,either due to over politicization or simply not knowing how to go about the resolutions and recommendations. Many of those recommendations were thrown over board. Many never got implemented. It even took a long while for them to accept the idea. They were asking all sorts of questions.
The N42 billion that I said was being lost annually which would now be regained,was the money to be recovered to the purse of the government, when they learnt it was going back to private pockets of people who would have lost the money? They were not happy.
Then, they asked another question like how were they to raise the money to implement these recommendations. I am sure they bought some of those ideas. There is nobody in Lagos that does not lose 30 minutes in traffic.
Multiply that by two, that is when he is going and returning, that is one hour and that is about 10 per cent of the economy. Not to talk of the money spent on analgesics as a result of stress, calculate that as N5 per day, per person in Lagos. Not to talk of the number of times you need to change your brake pad from over use, the number of times you need to change your tyres because of the stop-gap, stop-gap which eats the break drum which eats up the wheel which then eats up the tyres,.
We are not talking about the amount of fuel that is burnt while your vehicle is stationary. We are not talking about the effect on the engine that lead to frequent changes of top cylinder gasket. We are not talking about the amount of money wasted on beer and pepper soup by people after closing hours as they are not ready to go home because of traffic.
We are not talking about the amount of money spent by conductors and bus drivers on all kinds of drugs like sungbalaja, opaeyin and anti malaria. We are not talking about the money spent on spares of vehicles when accidents eventually occurred. We are not talking about the man hours lost. So, everybody is involved.
For a single dinner, if you say N5,000 a plate, all the banks, all the insurance companies would be there because invariably you are helping them to reduce accident, reduce claims, they would all be interested to attend the dinner. But what did they do?
They set up a mobile court with an omnibus jurisdiction whereas, the man is supposed to be charged to court within the Local Government where the offence was committed. But the same mobile court is in Apapa, Ikeja, Mile-Two which means you now encourage payment of cash, there is no record, no accountability.
25 per cent of the money is supposed to be ploughed back to the welfare of the staff. If you go to motor parks and see how these people supervise loading of yellow buses they were supposed to prevent from even stopping, not to talk of waiting to load. It is the exact opposite of why they were there. How can you compare that with what we are implementing now on federal roads? I am praying for the day the people of Lagos will request to hire FRSC to retrain their personnel so that traffic will not only flow on Federal roads but on Lagos roads too.
When somebody gets late to the office, he says it is the traffic and I ask which route did he take, by the time he mentions the route, I know it is state roads because it is either roads like Akute, Pen Cinema, Iju Road or Ikotun that they are held up. So, I will say traffic has improved since I returned to Lagos, so also accident has reduced drastically, but I am not going to give you figures. The figures are there at the headquarters in Abuja. I have compared March this year and last year, April, May, June, this year and last year. I was amazed, accident has drastically reduced. But as to the figures, you have to get to the headquarters.
From your explanation, you are the brain behind these agencies, i.e. LASTMA and LAMATA, but ironically, the organization you head in Lagos is now at loggerheads with the ones you created the idea that led to their formation. What actually is the genesis of the crisis?
I believe that God has a purpose for Nigeria and Lagos. Perhaps, it was because they did a selective implementation of the recommendations that I gave them which led to the disaster that we have in terms of traffic flow that God brought me back to FRSC to come and implement the directives of the Corp Marshall and chief executives on federal roads, to serve as basis of comparison between the State and Federal roads. All that the people need to do is to compare the time they spend on state roads with the time they spend on Federal roads for them to know whether it is better to be on State or Federal roads.
As to what led to all these, I have no answer because I am not aware of any. I am not God who gave them five running to six years to see what they would do about the five volumes of report that I provided the State Government. The 507 recommendations were bound in a separate volume so as to minimize confusion while making reference to the other volumes. What they did with that report is history now. And I would have been history too but for God. I am not God who caused the de-merger of FRSC from the Police.
Rejected stone
I am not God who brought the General Hannaniah back. I am not God who put the idea in the mind of the General to call me back and when he called me back, I was in Abuja working as his Special Assistant. I am not God who put it in his mind to ask me to return to Lagos without knowing that there is a purpose for all these. People should learn to accept the manifestation of the will of God. If they had conscience, they should be biting their little fingers now that the stone they rejected, the stone the builders rejected as worthless has become the head cornerstone.
Knowing where you are coming from as far as your relationship with LAMATA, LASTMA is concerned, there is this feeling that probably you are not happy with what is going on there because you knew what the concept was supposed to be originally which has been distorted. But some think that the lingering feud between the Lagos State Governor and the Minister of Works is part of the reasons why FRSC is at logger heads with LAMATA and LASTMA to the extent that at a point in time, your men were chasing LASTMA officials out of the roads. How would you react to this?
To the best of my knowledge, FRSC have never chased anybody out of the roads. They are not empowered to do that, they are not instructed to do that and they will never do that. As to the people that are at logger heads, I told you, I am not my own maker, when God has proposed to do something no one can change His purposes in whatever form. So how am I to be held responsible for the logger heads between two people. I don’t know. To me, this is just like trying to unravel the mysteries of God. God will do anything to make sure that it is His Will that prevails in the end.
