Fashola signs new model city bill into law

Tuesday, May 05, 2009 Guardianonline

Fashola signs new model city bill into law
By Seye Olumide

THE Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola (SAN), yesterday signed into law the new model city plan bill.

The law, meant to address the frequent collapse of buildings, is described as one of the most important legislations that the administration has enacted to prevent re-occurrence of collapsed building and carelessness of developers and structure owners in the state.

It stated that any landed property developer who embarks on construction or development facility contrary to the provisions of the physical town planning and development law shall henceforth be liable to two years imprisonment and a million naira fine or both if convicted.

According to Fashola: "The new bill will become very handy as it will help in the enforcement of town planning law, incidence of collapsed and unorganised buildings in the state.

Reiterating his commitment to fulfil the promises made to Lagosians, Fashola said "we would find a workable solution towards effectively addressing the incidence of collapsed building in Lagos. The law stipulates that any occupier, developer or owner who embarks on any construction or erection of any structure or development facility contrary to the provisions of the physical town planning and development law of Lagos State, if found guilty, shall be liable to two years imprisonment, N1 million fine or both."

The governor, who said this is one of the first steps his administration is taking towards resolving the disaster of collapsed building, added that other approaches would be adopted for full enforcement of the town planning laws and regulations on urban development.

Fashola added that the bill put into 30 sections was the awaited law for rapid urban development in the state.

According to him, "the model city development committee will be the implementation arm of the new law in their respective areas where they have been designated. Part of the power of the committee will be to monitor compliance with the state building development plan and approval order.

"By so doing government would be bringing into force the concept of participatory development and encouraging members of the public, Community Development Associations (CDAs), to come on board and participate in the development of their areas. The committee would also be empowered to enter into any premises to inspect and ensure compliance with urban development law of the state", the governor said.

Fashola warns against wholesale amendment of Land Use Act

Published 5/5/2009 2:52:00 AM Punchonline

Fashola warns against wholesale amendment of Land Use Act
Simon Utebor


Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, has cautioned against a wholesale amendment of the Land Use Act for its sake, saying the solution lies in making its administration more efficient through the use of technology.

In a statement by the governor’s Senior Special Assistant on Media, Mr. Hakeem Bello, on Saturday, Fashola was quoted as saying this at the annual dinner of the Nigerian Bar Association, Ikeja Branch, Lagos.

The governor said, “It has taken 31 years of painstaking efforts by judges at different levels to interpret every section of the Land Use Act to ensure that Nigerians have a clear regime of land administration. This portends a grave danger for the country to move from certainty to uncertainty.”

Governor Fashola explained that the Land Use Act was not new in terms of the land tenure system it prescribed, but was modeled after the old land tenure law of Northern Nigeria, which has now been consolidated upon by the country to develop a uniform system of land administration.

He added that because of the increasing population of the country and the resultant need by people in diverse areas of life for land, methods of keeping records and gaining access to records should be made more efficient to respond to the increasing demand and make transaction more seamless before tearing down the law.

This necessity, he said, informed the several innovative steps taken by the present administration to improve efficiency in land transaction; adding that the state government had embarked upon the GIS mapping of the state towards ensuring that it was put to use before the end of 2009.

Fashola, while supporting the call for electoral reforms, argued that electoral reforms would not be effective in Nigeria until everyone insisted that rules were meant to be binding and that those who violated them must face sanctions.

He identified what he called ‘the fundamental problem with the country’ as the inability to make rules work; adding that despite the fact that elections were governed by rules, Nigeria had never had an election enquiry as to why elections had not succeeded.

Fashola said, “I think all attorneys-general and members of the legal profession must begin to get creative, if possible, to initiate private prosecution to begin to punish those who threaten our collective patrimony.”

Also speaking, the President of the Nigerian Bar Association, Mr. Rotimi Akeredolu (SAN), warned the operators of electoral laws in the country not to set the country ablaze with their unwholesome conduct; adding that when elections were conducted in a free and fair manner, results would be gladly accepted by all parties.

LASTMA Impounds 39 Tankers at Amuwo-Odofin

LASTMA Impounds 39 Tankers at Amuwo-Odofin
Channels TV 21/2/09

LASTMA Impounds 39 Tankers at Amuwo-OdofinOver a hundred and thirty tankers have been impounded by the Lagos State Traffic Management Authority [LASTMA] around Amuwo-Odofin Estate Area of Lagos, south-west Nigeria.


The Acting General Manager of LASTMA, Engineer Babatunde Edu who spoke with newsmen during the operation said operation became necessary after the State Government gave several warnings to tanker operators not to park their vehicles indiscriminately.


Engineer Edu also asked other road users to always obey laid down traffic rules by the state.

Lagos May Lose Mega-City Status, DPA Warns

Lagos May Lose Mega-City Status, DPA Warns
Sunday, 22 February 2009 08:58 By FELIX OBOAGWINA

Lagos may lose its mega-city status if the attack on businesses and buildings stampedes population out of the state, the state’s chapter of the Democratic Peoples’ Alliance (DPA) has warned.

DPA pointed out that the state had lately rolled out several disincentives threatening its large population, including: High tenements, high rents, cut-throat transport fares, duplicated and double taxation and excruciating land charges –forcing developers on cost-cutting and bureaucracy-evading compromises which have resulted in collapsed buildings and avoidable deaths.

“Officials appear to be losing sight of the fact that the mega-city status is a function of large populations, not beautiful flowers and pavements,” Lagos DPA said in a statement by its Director of Publicity, Felix Oboagwina. “What we are saying is that Lagos has lost sight of the human factor. Infrastructures and orderliness are important, but development ought to be people-centred.”
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The party said displaced Lagosians had drifted to neighbouring Ogun State in search of friendlier habitation and business regulations.

According to DPA, the world reserved the mega-city status for places containing populations of between 9 and 10 million. Although the last census placed it at 9 million, Lagos State claims a population of over 15 million.

According to the party, Lagos needed to pay attention to the possibility of a thinning population, especially as stringent building and business regulations threatened to worsen its poverty profile. Statistics show that while the country had succeeded in reducing poverty in the last eight years, Lagos conversely recorded an increase with two-thirds of the population earning less than N4,000 monthly and 64 percent residents categorised as poor.

The party considered it wrong that Lagos administrators attempted to clone the state in the image of Abuja.

In the words of DPA: “The Action Congress wants to duplicate in Lagos what Mallam Nasir El-Rufai did in Abuja. But they should know that no international classification is placing Abuja as a mega-city despite its beautiful structures and perfect layout. It just lacks the population of a mega-city.”

According to DPA, AC chieftains had clearly misconstrued the concept of the mega-city.

“They are interpreting it in terms of infrastructure and beautification. But it really has to do with the population. Once an area attains a population of 9 to 10 million it gets the rating of a mega-city. It has nothing to do with beautiful environment. It is a market rating. But with the way businesses are being closed down, with the way residences are being demolished, with the unbridled and indiscriminate demolition of shops and markets, Lagos may witness a population flight that will wipe away its mega-city status.”

Citing an example of business-unfriendly regulations, the party pointed out that the Lagos State Signage and Advertising Agency (LASAA) had launched a pernicious war against small businesses, through mass confiscating of wooden chalkboards advertising small shops, phone calls and menial job vacancies.

“Today, we witness a frightening expansion of LASAA’s war which it initiated against big business by destroying billboards. This display of unbridled impunity has degenerated into a full-scale war against blackboards used by petty traders to announce products and services,” DPA lamented.

FELIX OBOAGWINA
Director of Publicity, Lagos DPA
08033327355

No more cheating the taxman

Published 2/22/2009 2:15:00 AM
Sunday Punch

No more cheating the taxman
Chinyere Fred-Adegbulugbe


Mrs. Mopelola Akinboboye, a businesswoman, deals in textile materials. For the past 20 years,

she has been in the Ogba Retail Market in Lagos doing what she knows best – sourcing for state-of-the-arts fabrics and selling them to her numerous clients.

If anyone had said anything about tax to her, she would have most probably waved it aside as one big joke. To her and her kind, asking them to pay tax would be akin to asking a vulture to visit a barber.

But all that has changed, at least in Lagos State. Thanks and no thanks to the Governor Babatunde Fashola administration that has decided that every Lagos resident who earns an income, must begin to pay tax. Right now, each year, she must pay the sum of N2,600 in tax. “They came to our market from Alausa last year and told us that we all had to pay tax, no matter what we are selling and how much we are making from it,” she explains. In fact, right now in the market, the ‘tax collectors‘ have got an office, so the chances of anyone defaulting appear quite slim.

And for someone who hasn‘t ever paid a dime, you would think she would have complained, but she says it is all in order. She says, ”They told us that the tax we are paying is what they will use to improve Lagos State and we can already see what Fashola is doing in the state. So I don‘t really mind paying the money because they are using it to make Lagos a better place.”

But if you think Ogba Retail Market‘s case is a peculiar one, a visit to Alade Market, located in Allen Avenue, will surely change your mind. Just like the situation in Ogba, a portacabin right in front of the market serves as an office of the tax officials from Alausa. Though in this case, rather than N2,600 that is obtainable in Ogba, each trader is obliged to part with N5,000 and display the receipt for the payment conspicuously at the shop entrance. And just like Akinboboye, Abiola is not perturbed that she has to pay tax to the government. ”I think it is a very good development. Some people are complaining, but it is because they are not used to it. ”You know in Nigeria we are not used to paying tax, but abroad it is something that is taken very seriously. Here people don‘t want to pay tax, but they want the government to keep working for them. It doesn‘t work that way, people must learn to pay tax because that‘s the only way the government can work for the society,” she says.

This renewed tax regime isn‘t limited to business people alone. A civil servant who works with the Federal Psychiatric Hospital, Yaba, Lagos, who pleads anonymity, says she and her colleagues were shocked when they realised that a sizeable chunk of their January salary had been deducted. “I was paying N1,355.22 up till December 2008, but when I got my January pay slip, I discovered that N6,355 was deducted from my salary,” she says.

Their grouse with the whole thing, she discloses, hinges on the fact that they were not informed about the new tax structure. “Actually, it was at the bank we found out we would be paying much more than before in tax. Many of my colleagues, including the senior staff member (who had to forfeit as much as between N20,000 and N30,000 in tax) were not happy. If they had told us earlier, probably we would have accepted the news better, without complaining,” she adds.

However, according to the Lagos State Government, the fault lies with employers, who obviously have not been deducting tax appropriately. That explains why some employees are feeling they are paying more than they should in tax. The Managing Director, Lagos State Internal Revenue Board, Mr. Tunde Fowler, who spoke to our correspondent on the phone, insists that the tax rate has remained constant in the last 10 years. He says, ”The tax rate has not changed in the last 10 years. So if you are now paying much more than you used to pay, that means your organisation has not been deducting the correct amount of tax and they are afraid that we would come after them.” Such defaulting companies, he says, will be penalised for audit liability.

He is not alone here. Discreet enquiries in a number of organisations revealed that the fear of the Lagos State Revenue Board Service is the beginning of wisdom. Obviously, many organisations have been short-changing the government when it comes to deduction and remitting of tax.

The Public Relations Officer of the government-owned hospital cited above, Mrs. Lydia Ajayi, when contacted, says there is no arbitrariness in whatever the members of staff are paying. ”Everyone, right from the Medical Director to the lowest paid worker is involved. It is based on the individual earning and we based our calculation on the Lagos State tax law. We have even given them relief forms to fill, which we have also returned to the revenue board. It is a very transparent process and we are doing it to avoid unnecessary back duty charges, which is what would happen if we don‘t charge the correct tax,” she explains.

But it is one thing to deduct money from members of staff in the name of tax, it is quite another to remit the money to the government. And that is one major concern some employees have expressed. According to Mr. Olabintan Adebayo, an engineer who works with a manufacturing company in Lagos, it was when he needed to participate in a United Kingdom immigration scheme that he realised that his employers had not been remitting the tax they had been deducting from his salary to the state government. ”I was asked to bring my tax clearance certificate as part of the process, but I was shocked when I went to the accounts department and discovered that they couldn‘t help me. That was when I realised that the company had been pocketing the tax I had been paying.”

In such situations, Fowler says they usually advise the affected staff to speak up, howbeit discreetly. He says, ”If your company has been deducting money from your salary in the name of tax and not remitting to the government, you should make a confidential report without mentioning your name and we go and investigate. And if found guilty, we will penalise such an organisation.”

A city by the Lagoon and the blessing of poetry

Monday, February 23, 2009
The Guardian

A city by the Lagoon and the blessing of poetry

Lagos of the Poets; Odia Ofeimun; Hornbill House of the Arts; Lagos; 2009By Reuben Abati .

ODIA Ofeimun in Lagos of the Poets (2009) defines through his selection of poems and poets, the essential humanizing value of the arts and the subliminal manner in which literature is locked in a continuously dynamic relationship with place and space that is simultaneously spiritual, physical, interactive and artistic.

The subject matter of the collection is Lagos: "lagos of the poets"and what it means as the author puts it to be "lagosed". But foregrounded here is the city as a subject of imaginative exploration, of romantic and intellectual wrestling, how one city compels a journey within and throws up a creative dialogue with the environment of being and living. Cities are places to be lived in, places of destination and departures, locations of identity, of gain and loss, of great contentions, of continuities and discontinuities, landmarks, culture, relationships and vanishing modes; each city like a living being has a soul, but these souls exist at different planes of value and intersections.

It is an ontological phenomenon that litters the landscape of literary imagining: so much has been written about London, New York, Dublin, Oxford, Cambridge, Morocco, Ibadan, Nsukka, Ife, Jo'Burg, and all spaces where man strives to manage self and nature, and it is understandable because writers are human beings whose sense of place and home and of space provides inspiration for romanticism or revulsion or protest or irridentism. What does it mean to live in a city? What does it mean to pass through a city and to be touched by its special identity? What is it about cities that moves artists to an imaginary land of expression? Catharsis? Identity? Or turmoil.

The city of Lagos is perhaps the most bibliographised of Nigerian cities and places: tomes have been written on it and about it by doctors, lawyers, anthropologists, historians, photographers, biographers, architects, novelists, dramatists, with each contribution capturing aspects of this cosmopolitan melting pot of intriguing diversity. In telling the story of Lagos through the eyes, the words and the imagination of poets, Odia Ofeimun, a leading light among the second generation of contemporary Nigerian poets, tells the story of Nigeria, the story of state and citizen.

The poets that are featured in this collection, with the exception of three are all Nigerians, and each one confesses an identification with the city of Lagos, born in Lagos, or passing through Lagos, or visiting Lagos, or hearing about Lagos or dreaming about Lagos, or working in Lagos, one city that touches not just every Nigerian citizen or a visitor to the country, but which leaves an impression.

In building Lagos, in historicizing Lagos, we gain a sense of national history, of how Nigeria has been built. In Lagos of the Poets, Odia Ofeimun allows the poets, and himself to paint a picture of the city on a broad canvas of words and imagery that runs from Lord Lugard, to Nnamdi Azikiwe to Dennis Osadebay to L. K. Jakande, Bola Tinubu and Babatunde Fashola. Odia Ofeimun's selection is by no means exhaustive, and many poets have probably been left out, but he chooses the poets that he knows, he chooses poems and poets that he considers of "sufficient artistic ambition to provide a sense of meaning beyond the here and now."

As editor however, Odia Ofeimun seems to have been propelled a bit too hard by a sense of balance, of geographical and generational balance, but the clear danger of seeking such balance, despite his resistance of the option of calling for open entries, and working hard at balance as a "hunter-gatherer", as he describes himself, is that the editor may not even achieve his sub-textual, political objective. Infusing a literary collection with a sense of Federal Character may be a wise thing to do but it may also impose undue concessions, spelled out in form of the unevenness of content.

But on the generational plane, Odia Ofeimun's broad canvas succeeds much more easily: in Lagos of the Poets, poets across generations write about this city of great ambivalence: Nnamdi Azikiwe, Dennis Osadebey, Gabriel Okara, Wole Soyinka, J. P. Clark, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Femi Osofisan, Niyi Osundare, Odia Ofeimun, Olu Obafemi, Mamman Vatsa, Funsho Aiyejina, Femi Fatoba, Kayode Aderinokun, Ben Okri, Ezenwa Ohaeto, Uche Nduka, Chiedu Ezeanah, Afam Akeh, Esiaba Irobi, Remi Raji, Wumi Raji, Emman Usman Shehu, Uche Nduka, Uzor Maxim Uzoatu, Nduka Otiono, Promise Ugochukwu, Maik Nwosu, Angela Nwosu, Obi Nwakannma, Helon Habila, Funmi Adewole, Rashida Ismaili, Idzia Ahmad, Kemi Atanda-Ilori, Lola Soneyin, Akeem Lasisi, Jumoke Verissimo, Austyn Njoku, Uzoma Azuah, Nenghi Ilagha, Ismail Garba, Al-Kasim, Abdulahi Ismaila, Aminu Muhammad, Simbo Olorunfemi, Funmi Adewole and so on, And then the outsiders: Maria Antonieta Flores, Saul Ibargoyen and Claire Harris.

Through this selection, the "hunter-gatherer"of poems on and about Lagos succeeds in conveying the cosmopolitanism, the diversity, the energy and the verve of a city that accomodates all and leaves an impression at every encounter, even from a distance: the city of insiders and outsiders, the city of troubadours, of potentates and ordinary citizens, and with each poem from one generation to another, we gain a sense of a generational romance, and of a city with unfinished possibilities, a city with a future as Odia Ofeimun sets up a dialogue and draws our attention in the direction of a city and a poetic tradition around it. In his preface to the anthology, Ofeimun attempts a deliberately ambitious commentary in which he tries to address all questions about the centrality and value of the city of Lagos, and the politics of his composition.

This part of the anthology is important for its absolute originality, its informativeness, Odia's autobiographical accent on his own connections with the city of Lagos and how this is the original impetus for the anthology. But more importantly, the author celebrates the city of Lagos, and in selecting poems and poets, he pays tribute to genius, talent and ambition: unfortunately, a vanishing attribute in Nigeria's troubled literary scene, long overtaken by illiteracy, pretence, and ethnic posturings.

But Odia Ofeimun knows: he is one of the clearest voices in Nigerian literature. His previous offerings include The Poet Lied, A Handle for the Flutist, Dreams at Work, Go Tell the Generals, A Feast of Return, A Boiling Caracas, I will ask questions with stones if they take my voice, in addition to forthcoming books which cover the areas of cultural studies, politics, polemics, journalism, literature and civil society activism, the many areas to which Odia Ofeimun has for more than three decades applied his polyvalent intelligence.

The tone of celebration of city and poetry that is struck in Ofeimun's preface runs through the entire anthology, even there is so much angst, so much obsession with the dark sides of Lagos. But this is one city that the poets love to distraction and they engage it in various forms as icon, as semiotic signifier, as symbol, and metaphor and idiom. As referent, they love it, they quarrel with it, they protest its inadequacies. They share with it an umbilical intimacy. So Akeem Lasisi writes in A song for Lagos: � have been with Lagos since the birth of the moon/When the lagoon was just a bottle of wine/And the magical ocean/A tiny pool in a roving gourd..." This romanticism is echoed in Rotimi Fasan's Eko Ile: "I came here on my head/ blood on my face/birth cries on my lips".

Even more graphically in Niyi Osundare's "Ikoyi" (p. 96), and "Eko" (p. 100), and Nnamdi Azikiwe's "Tarkwa bay" (p. 131). Many Lagos acolytes are unable to leave the city, they are like devotees at a pristine temple. Hear Mamman Vatsa, the soldier-poet reacting to the change of Nigeria's capital from Lagos to Abuja: "Take me back to Lagos/Where everyone's a boss/I miss the frequent go-slow/That can take you to and fro...../Keep your new capital city/It's too much of a great pity/I'm rushing back to my Lagos/Where everyone's a big boss".

This refusal to leave the city, this umbilical bond is further explored in the contributions by Emman Usman Shehu especially "How I will miss you" (p. 136): "How I will miss you, Lagos./If I should die from these wounds/My love is the broken shutters/I long again and again for your wayward ways." And in Promise Ugochukwu's Lagos (p.273), the poet writes: "may my tongue/stick to my palette/If I remember you not, Lagos/....You are my favoured yawn/Away from you, I am/Lost in the bulrushes/Anxious to return to you/City of hope, I lose sleep/Above the bridge of time."

This love of the city resonates as a connecting theme throughout the anthology, in form of songs and lyrical celebration of places and their peculiar circumstances: Ikoyi, Victoria Island, Ajegunle, National Theatre, Fela's Shrine, Ikeja, Tarkwa Bay, Allen Avenue, Mile 12 market, Okokomaiko, Ojuelegba, Idumota, Obalende CMS, Maroko, Oshodi Oke.

But this aesthetic and practical fusion of man and space is of the critical variety. There exists in spite of the romance a continuous oscillation of opposites: love/hate, admiration/protest, revulsion/identity; hope/frustrations, triumphs and impediments. Funmi Adewole says "the city is red"; Ben Okri protests about a "darkening city" ; Wumi Raji's "�n seeing a Dead Body at Oshodi" (p.27) is on all fours with Ogaga Ifowodo's "She Lay Dying at Oshodi" (p. 46), Aminu Muhammed writes about "Glow and Darkness" (p. 227)" and "�ko of Oddity" (p. 230) - comments on the increasing devaluation of human life in Lagos. The underlying note of disappointment is expressed more frontally in Okinba Launko's "Go to Lagos they said"(p. 134): "Lagos they said is the choice place to go/But nobody remembered the pain.../So go to Lagos they say/But with a heart to shelter pain."

The nature of this pain is fleshed out in the contributions by Jumoke Verissimo, Rotimi Fasan, Tolu Ogunlesi, Ogaga Ifowodo, Lola Shoneyin, Afam Akeh, Uche Nduka, Helon Habila, J. P. Clark, Wole Soyinka and Fela Anikulapo Kuti. The inclusion of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti among the poets is particularly instructive, as a special tribute by the author to an avant-garde artist whose lyrical compositions merged the modes of drama, agit-prop, narration and street poetry.

The anthology covers a range of techniques and talent available in contemporary Nigerian poetry, trends and styles in a representative manner, across four generations, from the more technically accomplished poetry of Wole Soyinka, J. P. Clark, Odia Ofeimun himself, Niyi Osundare, and Okinba Launko, to the definite and impressive continuity in the compositions of Chiedu Ezeanah, Ezenwa Ohaeto, Uzor Maxim Uzoatu, Remi Raji, Maik Nwosu, Obi Nwakannma, Esiaba Irobi, Wumi Raji, Uche Nduka, Nduka Otiono, Ogaga Ifowodo, Lola Shoneyin and the promise indicated in the works of Promise Ugochukwu, Helon Habila, Akeem Lasisi, Simbo Olorunfemi, Tolu Ogunlesi and Jumoke Verissimo. What is missing perhaps is Charles Nnolim's observation of an obsession with prurience in contemporary Nigerian literature; perhaps poetry which records a more bountiful harvest is more morally correct than the novel form, the subject of Nnolim's investigation under reference.

Protest has been a strong element of the literature of Nigeria's 90s and 20s, and much of it runs through these pages. There is a sense of frustration which is not only about the abuse of the Lagos environment, but more about the politics of dispossesion in the Nigerian society. J. P. Clark and Wole Soyinka and Odia Ofeimun are just as angry as the younger poets; the cadence is strong and direct. This protest or revolt is not in the long run, an expression of hate for the city itself, but revolt against its fortunes over time: a habitat that continues to burst at the seams, a city where many live and they refuse to leave or to part, even when the politics of its management and governance is problematic. And so Adebayo Lamikanra writes in "True Love betrayed" (p. 266): "I hate Lagos/I really do/I hate Lagos/ with deep intensity/The quality of intensity/reserved for true love/I hate Lagos/For what she has become/I hate Lagos/for the dreams she has/ destroyed/I hate Lagos for selling her heart/to the devil".

Contemporary poetic trends in Nigeria have shown much predilection for experimentation and the editor captures this, as evident in Ogaga Ifowodo's "God Punish you, Lugard" (p.45), Mamman Vatsa's "Obokun Oda bo" (p. 93); Niyi Osundare's "Eko" (p. 100); Rashida Ismaili's "Lagos" (p. 141); Esiaba Irobi's "The Lagoon" (p. 110), Odia Ofeimun's "London Letter" (p.195) and Fela Anikulapo Kuti's "Confusion Break Bone" (p. 277) wherein the poets press language into service, to reflect the varieties of English spoken in a city that is multilingual and linguistically innovative in all possible forms: the local tongue, pidgin English, and international languages.

Poetry, like the other genres of literature, heals and inspires. Here, the character, culture and the complexities of a city and invariably of a nation, its poltics and governance have been captured in long and short and varied strokes of words. In the process, the author claims ownership of the city for poets and writers, and the multiple sympathies it enjoys. Hear Femi Fatoba: "If you don't want to talk about Lagos/Lagos wil tease your tongue/If you don't want to discuss Lagos/Lagos will taunt your lips/And make your tongue itch/Whoever gets an itch in the tongue and does not talk/Let him swallow the tongue and become dumb/That is the way Lagos is". Odia Ofeimun's Lagos of the Poets is useful as both literature and sociology. It will, without doubt, find an enthusiastic audience among both the literati and the general reader.

Dos...don'ts on Lagos Island

Friday, February 20, 2009 Guardian

Dos...don'ts on Lagos Island
By Nnamdi Inyama and Seye Olumide

FOR too long, Lagosians had parked their cars almost anywhere and traders, usually with the acquiescence of local council officials had taken over sections of the road to display their wares without anyone doing much about it.

Whatever threats and penalties by the Lagos State government for the disregard of regulations against such practices had been ignored as the defaulters had counted on weak and ineffectual enforcement by officials.

But it may no longer be business as usual for those who deliberately abandon their vehicles along the road or the traders who allow their commercial activities to spill onto the highway and beggars within the Lagos Central Business District (CBD).

A joint publication by Lagos State Ministry of Information and Strategy and Office of the Special Adviser to the Governor on Central Business Districts (CBD) has called on Lagosians to take note of the various penalties awaiting those found guilty of any of the several offences.

The publication states: "In an initiative to re-enforce law and order around the CBD, the Lagos State government hereby draws attention of the public to the following public disorder offences contained in the Control of Traffic Special Provision Edict, 1978, which hereby by virtue of Section 315 of the 1999 Constitution is now a law of the Lagos State House of Assembly and the Road Traffic Law 2003 laws of Lagos State and the sanctions that may be imposed upon conviction for prohibition of parking along CBD, street trading and illegal markets and begging for or gathering or collecting alms".

The statement forbids anybody to park or pick passengers, sell, hawk, or expose for sale, any goods, wares, articles or things or offer services whether or not from a stationary position along walkway and likewise begging for or gathering or collecting alms on streets within the CBD which include: Outer and Inner Marina, Balogun, Broad Street, Martins, Nnamdi Azikwe, Eko and Carter Bridge, Apongbon, Idumagbo.

Others are Campbell, Breadfruit, Tinubu, Abibu-Oki, Oke Olowogbowo, Davies, Adeniji Adele, Church Docemo, Odunlami, Iga Iduganran, Ereko, Kakawa, Campos, Bamgbose, Alli Balogun, Ehingbeti (Marina Foreshore), Ebute Ero, Force Road, King George and all flyovers in Lagos Island.

It further states that vehicles abandoned within the specified areas "will be impounded by authorized persons while the owners shall be liable upon conviction to a fine or terms of imprisonment."

Any articulated vehicle impounded will attract a penalty of N150,000 fine before release, empty trailers or tankers N100,000, lorries and tippers, high capacity busses and mini busses, jeeps and cars N50,000 while in addition the owner will be liable to a fine of N50,000 or (N70,000 for commercial buses) or three months jail term.

Likewise those found sleeping in market places and on all flyovers or those trading illegally as earlier stated shall be guilty and liable on conviction to a fine between N5, 000 or N15, 000 or term of imprisonment of between six months and one year.

On wandering, begging or other criminal and environmental offences , offenders shall be liable to various amounts of fine or jail terms.

This includes defecating and urinating in the drainage or open spaces, erection of structures on road setbacks and abuse of open spaces and walkways.

However, while the state government may have determined to enforce sanity within the CBD, concerned citizens have expressed fear that unauthorized persons may want to take advantage of the situation to exploit innocent people.

For instance, a trader in Balogun Market, Mathias Okoi told The Guardian that though the laws are not new " but it is quiet unfortunate that most people do not know that such laws exist in the CBD area.

According to him, "What I want government to do is to give the laws more publicity while it should ensure that only authorized officials are given the mandate to apprehend offenders.

A situation where all kinds of people lay claim to powers to impound vehicles or arrest offenders would create its own army of touts.

The government should also use the councils, community development associations, newspapers, radio and television, to spread the message wider."

Reacting to the penalty for those found defecating or urinating inside canals or in open spaces, a resident of Idumagbo, Kehinde Anifowose urged government to go back to the regulation in force many years ago when all tenements were required to build, at least, one toilet.

"Of course, nobody will defecate in the canal during the broad day. It is mostly done at night and most people who do, are either miscreants that do not have accommodation or those residing in houses without toilets".

He lamented that there are still houses without toilets in Lagos, not just within the CBD area but also all over the state.

According to him: "There is still a lot more to be done in terms of improving the environment," he said.

Enquiries so far by The Guardian indicate most Lagosians are not so aware of the laws and the penalties for offenders.

It emerged that much as the citizens may have expressed support for the various efforts of the Lagos State government to improve the lives of citizens, there is need to re-orientate and re-train enforcement agents like Kick Against Indiscipline (KAI) Brigade, Neighbourhood Watch and Lagos State Traffic Management Authority (LASTMA) , on conduct and method of approach.

Reacting to the issues raised, the Special Adviser to the Governor on CBD, Mr. Oyinlomo Danmole said the laws are neither new nor made to victimize any Lagosians.

The laws, which would now be vigorously enforced are to protect the billions government invested to turn the CBD areas around to what it is at present.

He explained that for several decades millions of citizens deliberately avoided going to Lagos Island due to nuisance trading activities, criminality and other vices that could not be corrected.

According to him: "When the last administration of Bola Ahmed Tinubu reconstructed the CBD area in less than a year, the whole exercise was defaced and if there are no laws and proper enforcement to protect the investment and ensure sanity now then the whole efforts would end in futility".

The Special Adviser further assure that the enforcement team would be no one other than the CBD Enforcement Unit mostly on brown uniform with the team of armed mobile policemen to facilitate their job.

According to him: "We cannot afford to allow the N22 billion investment in the CBD area to be destroyed by traders or beggars".

On illegal parking and abandoned vehicles, Danmole said government wants to start impounding vehicles parked by owners without due consideration for traffic as well as those abandoned along the road within the mentioned places since the perennial traffic chaos synonymous with CBD area can partially be blamed on this factor.

"I still cannot imagine why anybody who could not maintain his vehicle would choose to park it on the road for years.

Apart from the fact that these abandoned vehicles obstruct traffic, they also cause litter and are sometimes hiding places for criminals," he said.

But a businessman, Dauda Alaba, was skeptical that the government could sustain the move.

"This is only for the next few weeks or months. The situation will not change. Do you know the number of beggars in CMS area alone, which is the heart of the CBD?

What are they doing there, if there is any seriousness in the efforts to sanitise the CBD?

If there must be sanitation, it must be total, thorough and continuous."

So far, the Commandant General of CBD, Mr. Raimi Asunramu had commended the level of compliance to all sanitation laws within the CBD.

He told The Guardian that over 16 offenders have been arrested and prosecuted for various offences.