By Jude Atupulazi
If there’s one thing blighting the Administration of Gov Chukwuma Soludo, that thing is the conduct of the Special Anti-Touting Squad, otherwise known as SASA. This agency was launched with fanfare some time last year in the commercial city of Onitsha, saddled with the responsibility of ridding the city of the menace of touts.
However, after one year, it is proving quite difficult to determine who between the SASA officials and the motor park touts are the real touts. This is no thanks to the tactics employed by SASA officials in dealing with the supposed touts and, now, anyone they encounter.
It wasn’t long when the organization was embroiled in a huge scandal following their arrest and treatment of one Mgbilimgba in Onitsha whom they beat black and blue with pestles for running foul of their laws. The man was so brutally beaten that he could not walk, owing to the fact that some of his bones were broken. How wouldn’t they break after being hit with pestles?
This incident which went viral on social media was greeted with outrage by members of the public who watched the gruesome video. As I write, the man is still getting treated at the Orthopedic Hospital in Enugu. He has also instituted a law suit against SASA.
After the uproar caused by this, one would have thought the agency had learned its lesson. But it was not to be. Last week another report of their brutality surfaced on social media. The leg of a woman was shown. It was badly bruised from below the knee to her right foot. In fact, that foot was so swollen that it is now feared it could be amputated to save the woman’s life.
What was her offence? She was said to have told the SASA officials from her bus to spare somebody they were beating. But, lo and behold, she was dragged out of her bus and pushed into the SASA bus and driven away. She was given the beating of her life where they took her to before returning her where she was picked.
While she battled for her life at home, SASA officials were said to have visited and given her N50, 000 after which they vamoosed and were seen no more, leaving the hapless woman to an uncertain fate.
This, indeed, is one act of brigandage too many. No matter the excuses SASA may give in due course, there’s no reason why any human being should be treated that way, even if they erred. More so, it becomes more terrible if a government agency is involved in such rascally behaviour. We thought before now that jungle justice was the exclusive preserve of a particular class.
What irks the most is the seeming inability (or is it refusal) of the Government of Soludo to deal with the menace of SASA. Rather, the agency has joined its sister agency, Operation Clean and Healthy Anambra, a.k.a. OCHA Brigade, to terrorize citizens in the guise of work. Sometimes I see hypocrisy in their work.
Take OCHA Brigade for instance. They’re always chasing road side traders and confiscating their goods for placing their tables beyond the gutter. But last weekend, I saw a man building a structure block an entire one lane at Secretariat Road with chipping, forcing road users to use one lane.
I wondered where officials of the famous OCHA Brigade were. Now compare blocking a whole lane and placing a table beyond a gutter and tell me which is worse. Is this not an open display of double standards? An example of some citizens being superior to others?
For sure, Soludo is doing well in the delivery of democracy dividend but the activities of some of the agencies he created are blighting his scorecard. Why on earth he’s been unable to rein in these notorious agencies beats my imagination.
I am now calling on him to bar the officials of SASA from bearing any weapons (that’s what going about with pestles amounts to). They should also be made to stop beating anyone, no matter the offence. They should rather handover such person or persons to the appropriate authorities, in this case, the police.
The OCHA Brigade people should be made to operate with a human face and stop wilfully confiscating the goods of poor traders. They should correct with civility and not with brutality
But even as I talk about these two agencies, the activities of government revenue agents come to mind. These people have been linked with causing some fatal accidents which the government always denies.
First was the accident in Oba that claimed lives. It was said by eye witnesses there that government revenue agents were collecting revenue there and holding up traffic when a trailer’s brakes failed and it smashed into vehicles held up in traffic there. Videos of the eye witnesses saying what happened there were seen. But government came up with a different story
Then, last Tuesday in Awgbu, another terrible accident happened which claimed the lives of six people. Again in the video clips seen at the scene, eye witnesses said that the trailer was being pursued by revenue agents until it came to the spot and smashed into some vehicles.
Again the state government denied the complicity of its revenue agents and rather blamed the opposition for spreading falsehood.
Now, I ask, were those crying men and women we saw in the videos members of the opposition? Did they stage the accident in order to malign the state government? Really, there should be a limit to denials by public officials. There should come a time when they should own up to their mistakes and turn a new leaf. Fact is that the activities of these agencies are becoming atrocious and need to be curbed by the state government to forestall future mishaps.
I don’t want to revisit the activities of touts at parks and markets as this seems to have overwhelmed the state government.
But the government remains in the best position to put things in order, rather than tell tales all the time and that’s what I’m asking the government to do and very quickly too.
