Lagos resident arrested for parking car in front of own bank
By an anonymous “victim”
I had a very terrible experience yesterday morning on my way to work and I want people to learn from.
At about 10am yesterday morning I parked in front of a bank to use the ATM. I had barely come down from the car, when I saw somebody videoing the cars parked in front of the bank.
By the time I opened the car I saw fleet of Lagos state branded vehicles. So many people came down and started removing the plate number of cars including mine, I came down from the car and forcefully tried stopping them from removing my plate number explaining to them that I just came to use the ATM.
Then one of the police officers said “madam it’s beyond us o the chief judge is in the bus”.
I then went ahead to open the chauffeur driven beautiful bus in the fleet and I was told by the police escort to go and talk to the team on the road. The vehicle plate numbers including mine were removed and they put a paper in front of my car to report at Alausa.
Before going to Alausa, I went in to see them in the bank and I asked them “is this how you allow your customers to be maltreated?”
They said and I quote “they don’t even know how to go about this Lagos revenue drive”.
On getting to Alausa, we were asked to wait that the chief judge to sit at the mobile court was still on the road and they had an overflow office filled with people.
To cut my long story short, they already opened a case file for each of their so called offenders and they advised I plead guilty before the magistrate otherwise the case would be adjourned till further notice. Can you imagine that?
Eventually I was charged guilty with a fine of N15k or an option of fine of one week community work, some had N20k and N25k as the case maybe with option of one month imprisonment. A lady said she was inside Tantalizer in Ogba when her plate number was removed. Both the prosecutor and defender lawyers were provided by them. Can you beat that? All they were saying is Lagos state needs to generate more revenue.
My questions are: Must our dear state generate her revenue at the expense of her citizens? Where are we then supposed to park when visiting, the banks, eatery and shops?.
