The Lagos State Traffic Management Authority (LASTMA) has impounded 235 vehicles and arrested 10 individuals following an intensive enforcement campaign across key traffic corridors in the metropolis. The operation, announced Thursday by LASTMA General Manager Mr. Olalekan Bakare-Oki, aims to restore order and discipline to Lagos’s busy road network.
Bakare-Oki explained that enforcement teams were fully deployed in high-density areas including Oyingbo, Iddo, Eja-Lonibu, Adeniji Adele Bridge, Sabo, the Inter-State Terminal at Jibowu, and Oshodi. “These locales have long contended with chronic congestion, indiscriminate parking, flagrant environmental violations, and general traffic anarchy,” he said.
“These vehicles were seized for various breaches of the Lagos State Transport Sector Reform Law of 2018,” Bakare-Oki noted. “Offences ranged from unlawful encroachment upon pedestrian pathways and obstruction of vehicular flow, to establishment of illegal terminals and reckless disregard for established traffic regulations.”
In a notable incident, five articulated trucks were intercepted atop the Adeniji Adele Bridge while illicitly offloading livestock—including rams, cows and abattoir waste—posing serious risks to public safety and the bridge’s structural integrity. “They compromised both public safety and the structural integrity of the bridge,” the LASTMA chief said. “The drivers, in manifest contempt for sanitation laws, are now subject to imminent judicial proceedings.”
Bakare-Oki added that the crackdown was carried out at the behest of the Special Adviser to the Governor on Transportation, Mr. Sola Giwa, who “persistently championed a strategic, coordinated response to the entrenched culture of indiscipline” undermining Lagos’s transport system.
He confirmed that subsequent phases of the campaign would extend to all five administrative divisions—Ikeja, Badagry, Ikorodu, Lagos Island and Epe—and involve a “comprehensive mix of regulatory, logistical and technological assets to reclaim public roadways from abuse and restore the urban commons to lawful users.”
“LASTMA is now operating under a strict zero-tolerance mandate against traffic infractions,” Bakare-Oki declared. “All impounded vehicles will be promptly arraigned before the Lagos State Mobile Court for prosecution. The era of impunity on our roads is over. This operation is not an attack on any demographic or commercial interest; it is an overdue rectification of systemic dysfunction. We call upon every road user to embrace this moment as an invitation to collective civic renewal.”
The 10 individuals arrested have been charged with various traffic-related offences and will appear before the Mobile Court in the coming days.
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