By Stanley Onyekwere
Director, FCT Directorate of Road Traffic Services (DRTS), Dr. Abdulateef Bello has warned operators of commercial motorcycles popularly known as ‘Okada’ riders to avoid plying restricted areas in Abuja, the nation’s capital city.
Bello particularly cautioned Okada riders to obey traffic rules and regulations in the nation’s capital as well as restraining policy not to ply some FCT routes especially the highways, failure of which, their bikes would be confiscated and crushed.
He said : “They (Okada riders) should stay within confined areas such as estates and market places, not to approach the high ways; so all those that contravene will face the punishment of having their bikes crushed”.
The DRTS boss gave this warning when he paid an on-the-spot visit to the DRTS Task force office in Wuye, to acquaint himself with the activities of the task team, at the weekend.
Bello restated that, government will not rest on its oars untill the nation’s capital is free from operations of Okada that constitute nuisance and security threat.
According to him, “Like we did the last time, this motorcycles have been impounded and awaiting crushing exercise, they are motorcycles that were arrested , contravening the law and regulations , driving against the traffic within the Federal Capital City (FCC)
“Right now we have over one thousand two hundred waiting to be crushed. As much as the exercise is ongoing, we are calculating by our estimation when we have one thousand five hundred motorcycles, then we begin another second round of the crushing.
“These motorcycles were impounded within three to four months, we did the last exercise around November/ December, then we started assembling the newly impounded motorcycles”.
