BY Samad Uthman
The federal capital territory administration (FCTA) says it is considering the arrest of commercial motorcycle (Okada) riders together with their passengers.
Speaking after the crushing of 470 impounded motorcycles in Abuja on Thursday, Bello Abdulateef, FCTA’s director of road traffic services, said the extension of the arrest to passengers would ensure the eradication of the menace of “Okada” riders in the nation’s capital.
Abdulateef said the crushed motorcycles were impounded for operating along restricted areas in the FCT and other satellite towns.
“For safety and security reasons, people should always make sure that they avoid plying motorcycles within the FCC because as the situation is, we might be arresting people that are equally plying motorcycles,” Abuja Digest, an FCTA publication, quoted Abdulateef as saying.
“We have consistently maintained that commercial motorcycles are not allowed in the federal capital city.
“But of course, apart from the city centre, our highways are equally not encouraged for commercial motorcycles to ply, because of safety and security reasons and that is why we have extended our operations beyond the FCC to other area councils that actually feed the city centre.”
While explaining why the FCTA would intensify its clampdown on violators, Bello said “the number of motorcycles operating in the FCT is extremely outrageous.
“Impounding 200, 300, or 400 on a weekly basis will not address the need,” he said.
“What we are doing now is to intensify our operations with other security agencies to enable us to move deeper into these operations by working in the night and removing them based on intelligence on where they are, aside from just chasing them on the road.”
Earlier, Nyah Ubokutom, secretary FCTA transportation secretariat, warned commercial motorcyclists to strictly limit their operations to the areas designated by law.
“We are here to carry out what has been adjudicated for and approved by the law,” Ubokutom said.
“Our mandate is to deliver a smart city and we are poised to deliver on that mandate of making Abuja a smart city, clean in air quality safe for habitation and transportation and also make it affordable, but we cannot allow residents to take laws into their hands.
“There are areas designated for different kinds of vehicles. Motorcycles are designated to the outskirts in the Area Councils, so we encourage operators to respect that because if you cross that line the full wrath of the law will be visited on violated.”
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