Over the past 3 weeks, I have heard accounts from 3 completely different and unrelated persons of how they were robbed of their phones while in Danfo along Lagos Abeokuta Expressway precisely around Alakuko-Kola axis.


The victims, who are usually busy doing one thing or the other on their phone while seated by the window in the bus, are suddenly attacked from outside the bus by these hoodlum dispossessing them of their phones.


It is impossible that this phenomenon has not come to the attention of the security agents if I in this small corner of the world can know about 3 different occurrences already within the space of a few weeks. I wonder what they are doing about it. The perpetrators of such acts are usually well known to the police.


At Tollgate too of late, bags, phones and other valuables are frequently forcefully grabbed from pedestrians going about their daily routines. The place has become a blind spot of some sort. People are helpless even as the miscreants turn these places into a hotspot of criminal activities. Little wonder someone posted a banner hung on the Sango bridge here yesterday.


People are being pushed to the wall gradually. I honestly don’t like to complain but things are getting out of hand. Look at the state of the roads along these axes. What about the general hospitals? Schools? It is as if government doesn’t exist here. No federal presence whatsoever except for FRSC at Tollgate where accidents happen regularly like clockwork without any permanent intervention to reduce/eliminate same. State government is in faraway Abeokuta. I am not sure the Governor knows a place like this exist.


People are regularly being dispossessed of their phones at a time when it is practically impossible to get a new line. What exactly do we pay taxes for? Are there actually people being paid monthly whose jobs it is fix these issues? Who are those in charge? Who can we hold accountable?


A government that fixes a 2 week deadline (I know it has been extended but the damage has been done!) for a registration that will bring thousands, if not millions to gather in the middle of a second wave of a pandemic cannot be okay. Something is definitely wrong somewhere.


Not only are they not proactive, never mind strategic, they are actively contributing to the problems. Their silence is deafening. Their inactions passively injures us. Their actions and policies actively add salt to our injuries. They directly make things worse for the citizenry. You would think the purpose of government in this part of the world is to constantly seek ways to negatively impact the populace.


I appeal to those in charge to round up these thieves dispossessing people of their valuables along that express. Enough is enough. The one I heard yesterday is one too many abeg.