By Aj. Dagga Tolar

It is no longer news that the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) has suspended the leadership and membership of its Lagos State chapter headed by Musiliu Akinsanya, aka MC Oluomo. The news however is the supposed appointment of the same person so suspended as the head of the newly established Parks Management Committee by the Lagos state government headed by Sanwo-Olu, so as to enable it to continue with the business usual of extorting money from commercial motorists in the parks and all of the bus-stops in Lagos state.

The crisis is a permanent feature of the NURTW given the juicy pie it presides over, according to the International Centre for Investigative Report issued last year, states a conservative sum of N123.078 billion Naira is generated yearly from the parks in Lagos state alone. it is the war to control this huge fund that is reported by the punch to dwarf the annual budget of the three states of “Nasarawa, Niger and Yobe put together” that is at the root of the crisis in the NURTW. With no respect for a democratic process or tenures leaders, choose to stay in power, until a sufficient wing feels strong enough to take steps to unseat those in power, and in most cases, violence is employed to achieve this.

The ruling elites have remained unbothered, rather than effect measures that would demand that the NURTW as a union respect all of the democratic rules governing a union, through the conduct of elections, respect for tenures… it chooses to profit from the scenario of falling back on these armies of boys to intervene on their behalf politically in their favour either as thugs or as rigging machinery for the agreed bargained price.

Is the appointment of Mc Oluomo nothing more but with the intention to continue with the same manner of activity of extorting money from the motorist, why is the Lagos state government going to this extent, if not from the point of view of “I scratch your back you scratch my back”. Not when general elections are around the corner the power that be in Lagos cannot afford a situation, that will cut it off from one of its most important political machinery of boys running into thousands that are willing to perform any dirty task on its behalf.

The root of this phenomenon can be traced to the absence of politics based on the working masses, which has meant that the ruling elites are permanently in need of a group or gang that they can readily fall upon to do their dirty jobs for them. How Lagos has easily served as the base for this phenomenon dates back to the second republic with the NPN Federal Government providing support for Bayo success in Mushin to build a force of boys who can come in handy against the UPN led reform administration of Lateef Jakande.

The NURTW is currently organized completely at variance as to what is expected of a Road Transport Workers Union. It is made of youths who see themselves employed to collect tolls from main transport workers of drivers and bus conductors daily at the parks in Lagos. This complete deriding and indirect takeover of the union, transformed completely into a money-making machine, with the real transport workers completely chased out of the union, membership now completely made of hired hands who in the conquest of bus stops and parks imposed themselves as supervisory collectors of toll from all commercial vehicles, with no benefit whatsoever to members of the union, can only mean that the transport union in this sense as ceased to be union.

While acknowledging that it has served as a form of social security for the mass of unemployed youth. And in this sense, it is nothing else than the words of Robert Tresell’s classic. “Ragged Trouser Philanthropist”, the very poor been fleeced to carter for the mass of unemployed, when in reality we should join hands in reorganizing society, to have a country where the wealth of society would serve to meet the needs of all, create jobs, and in cases where the jobs are not enough to go round ensure that the necessary social scheme is put in place that would ensure a minimal amount of allowance is made available to the unemployed to guarantee that their basic necessities are met.

We outrightly fault the Lagos State government in siding with a faction of the NURTW in this case through the appointment of Mc Oluomo to head its so-called Park Management Committee. We call on the NLC leadership to wade into the dispute on the suspension of Mc Oluomo from the union. While at the same time recognizing the need for commercial drivers and conductors to begin to organise to reclaim their union or even exercise the right to birth a new union that would defend the right of transport workers, against extortion of all forms both from the police and from touts.
But in all, the transport sector like other sectors of the economy begs for the involvement of the state through massive investment in infrastructural facilities of road networks linked to a developed rail system both heavy and light, as well as linked with waterways to ease the transport crisis in the state and country, and put in place as well a public managed transport system that would be democratically managed and would not have to pay any toll whatsoever outside of the needed monthly check-up dues to allow for the effective function of the union.