SECURITY ON OUR ROADS
I am taking a detour from the normal angle of writing today; I want to delve into the happenings in our society as regards economy, politics and security but basically the security personnel and the situation on our roads.
You would have asked yourself a question while travelling on our roads, especially when the journey is a bit far. The question would be "how many security agents are we to have on our roads in Nigeria?".
At every interval you meet security personnel at checkpoints and the baffling thing is that all of them will request bribe from the drivers. It got to a point where I pitied this drivers die to the amount of money spent on the road just to settle the security on the road.
It dawned on me how hard it is for Nigerian commercial drivers when I was travelling from Abuja to Kwara state recently, because the driver paid security personnel at every checkpoint.
Note that security checkpoints in Nigeria cannot be numbered, the checkpoints I saw while travelling was nothing less than thirty (30), and without asking for or checking for anything in the car, the first thing they ask for is bribe, it got to a point where our car was brushed by a trailer at checkpoint which resulted to the damage of our car's side mirror.
The believe in every Nigerian is that the Police force are the ones known for collection of bribe, but I was shocked to see Soldiers and Road Safety officers collecting bribes on our highway.
This canckerworm has actually eaten deep into our system that it has affected all facets of our country's security outfits.
But the question remains; what is the cause of this? How can we tackle it and solve it? It is an open ended question which needs answers from Nigerians.
I am taking a detour from the normal angle of writing today; I want to delve into the happenings in our society as regards economy, politics and security but basically the security personnel and the situation on our roads.
You would have asked yourself a question while travelling on our roads, especially when the journey is a bit far. The question would be "how many security agents are we to have on our roads in Nigeria?".
At every interval you meet security personnel at checkpoints and the baffling thing is that all of them will request bribe from the drivers. It got to a point where I pitied this drivers die to the amount of money spent on the road just to settle the security on the road.
It dawned on me how hard it is for Nigerian commercial drivers when I was travelling from Abuja to Kwara state recently, because the driver paid security personnel at every checkpoint.
Note that security checkpoints in Nigeria cannot be numbered, the checkpoints I saw while travelling was nothing less than thirty (30), and without asking for or checking for anything in the car, the first thing they ask for is bribe, it got to a point where our car was brushed by a trailer at checkpoint which resulted to the damage of our car's side mirror.
The believe in every Nigerian is that the Police force are the ones known for collection of bribe, but I was shocked to see Soldiers and Road Safety officers collecting bribes on our highway.
This canckerworm has actually eaten deep into our system that it has affected all facets of our country's security outfits.
But the question remains; what is the cause of this? How can we tackle it and solve it? It is an open ended question which needs answers from Nigerians.
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