Okada Ban: FCTA Crushes Over 400 Bikes, Vows to Sustain Enforcement

By: Wisdom Acka

Despite unrelenting attacks on members of its Ministerial Task-Force on City Sanitation, the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) has vowed to continue with aggressive enforcement on the ban on commercial motorcycles (okada).

Director, FCT Directorate of Road Traffic Services (DRTS), Dr. Abdulateef Bello, who made this vow on Wednesday in Garki I District, Abuja while crushing 476 bikes impounded for violating the restrictions.

According to him, the Directorate would sustain the impounding and crushing of the bikes so long as the operators kept violating the restrictions.

Bello urged residents to help government in discouraging the lawlessness of these commercial motorcycle operators; stating that the restrictions are still valid, and the FCT Administration would remain committed to zero tolerant to violation of extant rules.

Senior Special Assistant to FCT Minister on Monitoring,  Inspection and Enforcement,  Ikharo Attah, who monitored the exercise said while the violators of rules continue to thrive in their negative attitudes,  the Task-Force will remain firm to going after them. 

Attah expressed shock that after repeated warnings through different means, and crushing of over 1,000 impounded bikes, few months ago, people were still taking unnecessary economic risk by bringing in droves commercial motorcycles to restricted areas.

“It is worrisome that despite all that we do on a daily basis, activities of these commercial motorcyclists have been linked with criminal activities. They ought not to operate within the Capital City,  but here we have operating in total contraventions of what the law says in a modern city like Abuja,” the SSA stressed.

“We crush them in full public glare and scrap sold and the money paid into government’s coffers but the operators have not relented”, he decried.