Towing Vehicle Robbery At Lagos Airport

As I drove towards the international wing of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport on Thursday, January 30, 2020 in my car, my heart was in my mouth. It was roughly 4:30pm.It was almost seven years since last I drove myself there. I had had a bad encounter there about 15 years ago when my car was towed over illegal parking.I had always contracted my friend and younger brother to do the driving on all the occasions I had had cause to pick friends or family.
Now as I neared the “large building”, I noticed a vast parking space, the very first, to my right. Is this the right place to park when planning to pick a guest at the arrival section? I was not sure… Careful to avoid a repeat of that experience of over a decade ago, I veered off the highway into what I took to be the safety of the vast park — and stopped at the red soil-fresh clearing before the toll gate erected before the park. On enquiry from the men at the gate I was told the park was for staff only and that the visitors park was still some distance ahead. At that point, I decided to call my guests (who had earlier told me they were being checked in) if they were already outside so that all I would do would be to drive up, pick them, and move on and out.
With my elbows resting on the car, I was doing that when a passer-by warned me that even that far from the highway, my car could still be towed. Quickly, I cut the call and re-entered the car and started the engine. It was then I saw them. A black vehicle materialised at the entrance to the park and made straight for my car. Four or five fellows leaped out and mobbed my car. They went for the tyres as if to deflate. All I heard from them was a babel of allegations of which I could only make out: “You should not have parked there.”
It made no sense to me. I was way off the highway. I was making enquiries and I was inside the car. What could be against the law in all those? But they were all business-like. My natural voice, even at its peak is of moderate decibel. And after, I had managed to make myself heard, the pack seemed to simmer a little but asked me to discuss with a member of the pack who had meanwhile slipped into my driver’s seat.
He spoke Yoruba and thinking I could make “this one” see reason, I took the passenger’s seat in my own car and he drove out of the park premises. But he did not stop. Despite my renewed explanation, his response was that I had to pay him 5,000 naira so he would not take me to “the office”. I could not believe it was happening. Despite all my precaution by that time my phone was ringing incessantly. Obviously, my guests were through with checking in and needed to know my location. All Yoruba proverbs I deployed — from báabá ránmo n’ísé erú… to ojú á túnrarí òwe Àkàlà… — made no dent on the rogue driver’s brute resolve. There was nothing official about his attire or his looks.
At last, he stopped at a kiosk-like structure before the Accident Investigation Bureau where I had to repeat all my apologia to another ” lord”. This one listened with apparent civility. Then I reminded him that there is a difference between those who, though carefully law-abiding like myself, make a slip and habitual lawbreakers who care nothing for rules. He told me of the difficulty of telling the two apart. I told him experience, the facts of the case and intuition would help. Then I presented my Editorial ID card.
He seemed to mull this a spell… Then: “You have to pay the N5,5000.” Clearly, the facts I presented (which the fellow who drove me to the ” office” never contradicted) did not influence his verdict.
Other victims were there too. One of them, with a “Praise The Lord” banner atop his attire, told me, with stoic resignation, that he had tried unsuccessfully to locate any higher personnel of the “office”. They seemed to be “independent operators”. His car had developed a fault and he was chugging it along when he was accosted, he moaned. I could not confirm or dismiss his story. But I knew my own story. And I am convinced I was unjustly accosted. I drove off the highway and NEVER left my car. No law could justify the “arrest”. Any system that does that to me, careful, law-abiding me, is patently faulty…
The “lord” stood up after his verdict and exited the “office” with the swagger of an eccentric judge re-entering his chambers; only he was headed for the toilet ( it couldn’t have been a “gents”). And he flung that information at me as he sauntered off. I took in the environment. The atmosphere was roguish, uncouth, brutish. Like a gangster enclave in the midst of sparkling officialdom …Who gave so much power to these fellows without supervising its exercise?
Other victims were protesting aloud as their pleas fell flat all round and men in suits and ties ordinarilly disinclined to foul language were resorting to ancestral curses. I could not determine their guilt or innocence. On my part, I had to be picking several calls and reeling off short retorts to quell the complaints of my guests and other stakeholders anxious about my whereabouts. In the process, I lost my temper, found it again and, fortunately, kept it.
Then I remembered OKT…
About a quarter of an hour later, I was driving out of the “office” premises. But others were still trapped there. Their cars seized. Including my stoic friend with the banner proclaiming redemption — amidst souls in danger of being irredeemable.
I was to learn later that the tow-vehicle business was by concessioning and government wielded little or no control over its operations. And that the workers had to meet wicked targets or lose their jobs. That should not be. Unregulated power is prone to gross abuse. Are foreigners so treated too? Must revenue be “robbed” in at the expense of justice? Fairness? Sanity? Decorum?

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