Chiemelie Ezeobi
For illegally commercialising and ticketing commercial buses and private vehicles at the Ojodu-Berger area of Lagos, the Rapid Response Squad (RRS), wednesday arrested six hoodlums often referred to in local parlance as ‘area boys’.
The suspects who were found with hundreds of unsold tickets and the day’s earnings, were mopped up after series of complaints by motorists, which triggered an investigation by the police operatives
It was gathered that the ticket racketeering had begun in May this year after Governor Akinwunmi Ambode commissioned the Ojodu – Berger layby along with other facilities there.
The construction of the lay-by and the park was for cars and commercial buses to park, discharge their passengers and then move on.
However, few weeks after the commissioning, these area boys had shown up and converted it to their park, establishing the business of ticketing cars and buses discharging passengers.
Pressed by the need to inject sanity to the lay-by and return it to what it was designated to be, RRS undercover agents swooped on the ticketing syndicate and caught most of them with piles of tickets.
In another development, acting on the incessant complaints of bag snatching along the Iddo Terminus, the RRS Commander, Olatunji Disu, an Assistant Commissioner of Police, led his men to investigate.
During the routine for the exercise, men of the squad were positioned at the terminus, to wade off the stem of crime in the area, especially at night.
Aside the daytime reconnaissance and monitoring, it was gathered that some of the squad would be deployed there as part of measures to curbing the menace.
Also, Disu and his team equally extended the monitoring to other pin down points in areas such as Oyingbo, Idunmota and Ebute Metta.
