By Nnanna Otu (Lagos Bureau Chief)
Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States of America, provided the classic definition of democracy as ”government of the people, by the people and for the people”. His position on democracy is that the people are the central hub around which democracy revolves. The people here refer to the citizenry, the entire population of bona-fide citizens of a nation residing within and perhaps outside the geographical expression of the Nation State. This has been the time tested and universally accepted definition of the political ideology known as democracy.
However, in Lagos State there is a new lexicon in our political ideology. It is called AGBEROCRACY. Agberocracy if taken in the context of Abraham Lincoln’s definition for Democracy will be defined as “a government of Agberos, by Agberos and for Agberos”. This new political ideology is operational in Lagos State. Agbero in local parlance is the street word for Touts, Street Urchins, Hoodlums and Roughnecks. These human scums determine to a large extent how people live, move about and how people carry out their daily businesses in Lagos. You must factor in their cost in any and every project you embark on in Lagos. They come in form of the ubiquitous roughnecks you find all over Lagos at Bus Stops/Garages and along the Roads that extort commercial drivers by brute force. Any delay in responding to their harsh and hoarse demand for money could earn the Bus Conductor/ Driver a thorough physical assault or the driving mirrors yanked off or even both. The Commander General of this band of hoodlums is the highly dreaded MC Oluomo, he is a law unto himself. They constitute unspeakable terror on the roads of Lagos.
The next group of Agberos are those that operate in all the markets under the command of the Iya lo Oja General of Lagos, incidentally, the present Iya Lo Oja happens to be the daughter of Asiwaju Bola Ahmend Tinubu. They collect daily levies and fines from traders in all the markets, they determine what market or markets will be locked for a day or more in honour of a traditional event or to ensure that all traders turn out massively to attend an event.
There is Omonile specie of Agberos. These ones roam the streets in search of new building projects. Once they find any project site or perhaps a building undergoing rehabilitation, they will descend on the project owner and decree the amount that must be paid to them, otherwise they will chase away the owner and his workers from the project site. The Omoniles operate in the same fashion as the Agberos on the road employing brutal force as their only weapon.
The interesting part of the Agbero phenomenon in Lagos is that their activities enjoy the full backing and protection of the State Government and there are no pretenses about that. This position is buttressed by the fact that state actors and quasi-security agencies like LATSMA officials sometimes work in collaboration with these touts and street urchins who wield dangerous weapons, especially once it is dark. Corroborating the alleged connivance with touts, a cab operator on the island, Rotimi Owotimo, alleged that rather than maintain sanity and free flow of traffic on Lagos roads, LASTMA officials connive with policemen and ‘area boys’ to extort commercial and even private drivers.
Also, when MC Oluomo lost his re-election bid to retain the Chairmanship position of the National Union of Road Transport Worker NURTW, Lagos State Branch last year, the State Government swiftly moved in, outlawed the activities of NURTW in Lagos State created the Lagos Parks and Garages Commission with the same MC Oluomo as the Chairman. The Parks and Garages Commission took over the functions of NURTW in Lagos State. Like sesames twins, Agberos are inseparable from the State Government, they complement each other. The government provides protection, while the Agberos swell the treasury of the Government and provide generous extra cash handouts on regular basis to the top hierarchy of the administration.
By their sheer numerical strength, Agberos come in handy and are used for several other “dirty jobs” for Government. They are engaged as political thugs in election season to intimidate political opponents, threaten recalcitrant supporters of opponents, snatch Ballot Boxes, chase away voters in opponents strongholds, act as hired assassins and they are also used to scatter and disperse peaceful campaigns and processions by opponents. In the last Gubernatorial election in State, they were used to brutally enforce the directive of MC Oluomo that Igbos should not come near Voting Centers in Lagos, in the end some lives were lost and no arrests made.
Indeed, there is a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship between the Lagos State government and the Agberos and this relationship has the seal of the Grand-master himself Asiwaju Bola Tinubu. A week ago, commuter bus drivers protested the sudden hike in the amount they paid to Agberos from N5,000 to N8,000 a day, movement was disrupted for two days and workers bore the brunt of it all, but the State Government pretended not to be aware of the protest. After two days, the drivers were chased back to work by hunger and they had to accept the new charges. That is how powerful Agberos are in Lagos.
