Commuters in the Lagos metropolis have expressed concern over the failure of bus drivers to indicate routes on their vehicles.This, they say, has made navigation through the city difficult and at times, raised security issues.Hitherto, it was common to find route numbers and other particulars boldly inscribed on commercial vehicles in the state.This usually made it easy for commuters to identify the appropriate vehicle to board for a particular route or trace their goods often forgotten in transit.A cross-section of commuters complained to our correspondent on Friday that sometimes, tracing a vehicle for items forgotten in it had become a difficult task.A youth corps member serving in the state, who identified herself simply as Franscisca, said she lost a bag the first week she arrived in Lagos due to her inability to identify the vehicle she boarded from Berger to Ogba en route the National Youth Service Corps camp in Iyana Ipaja.She said, My temporary loss of concentration cost me dearly that day. When I got to Ogba, where I had to board another bus, I removed my big bag together with the handbag and went to board the Iyana Ipaja bus. In fact, I had already seated when I remembered that I left my third luggage where I had my shoes and other items.When I raised the alarm and was asked to describe the bus, the only thing I could say was that it was painted yellow; I could neither quote the registration number nor any other thing. All efforts made to trace the bus did not yield anything and I lost the bag.SATURDAY PUNCH observed on Friday that most of the buses plying Ikeja, Ojodu Berger and Agege did not bear any number or particulars of their routes.The few ones that had the numbers used markers to scribble them on their vehicles. There were yet others, who plied routes different from those inscribed on their buses.When Kazeem, one official of the National Union of Road Transport Workers in Ojodu Berger, was asked why the regulation was being flouted by the drivers, he attributed it to frequent painting of the vehicles.He said, That many of them do not have routes written on their buses does not mean that we cannot identify them. Most of the buses are painted frequently because of the nature of the job, but even those who dont paint their buses in Lagos colours cannot work on the road without being properly identified. We know who is who on the routes.He said it was not easy for any commercial bus driver to ply a route that was not approved for him without getting into trouble with the NURTW officials.But some of the commuters said the state government should enforce the route number identification regulation to save them the headache of identifying vehicles they boarded.Mr. Ifeanyi Ubah told SATURDAY PUNCH that such a measure would curb the excesses of some of the drivers when they know that their route numbers could be quoted, apart from their registration numbers.He said, I was a victim of one chance one day when I was coming from Yaba area to Berger. All the three of us who fell victim were robbed of our cell-phones and money.By the time they finished with me, they dropped me off at Maryland, I discovered that no route number was inscribed on the bus but it was painted yellow. The number plate was not even bright enough to be quoted and so, I had to bear my fate.An official of the Lagos State Ministry of Transport, who pleaded anonymity, told SATURDAY PUNCH that the routing measure was embarked upon for safety and administrative purposes.She advised that the Commissioner for Transport, Mr. Kayode Opeifa, was the appropriate state official that could comment on the issue.
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