Funso Doherty, governorship candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) in Lagos State, has accused successive administrations of lacking the political will to tackle the activities of street touts popularly known as agberos.
Doherty made the allegation on Sunday during the Lagos governorship debate, where he blamed vested interests in the state’s transport sector for frustrating efforts to modernise public transportation.
He criticised Lagos’ continued reliance on thousands of ageing commercial buses, arguing that residents deserved a more efficient and modern transport system.
The NDC candidate questioned why successive administrations had taken so long to reform the state’s public transportation system despite the challenges associated with its current operations.
“Our public transportation system is not modernised. Thousands of rickety buses are moving around,” he said.
“We must ask ourselves: are these what our people deserve? Why has it taken so long to modernise public transportation?”
Doherty argued that the failure to modernise the transport system was not accidental, alleging that powerful interests benefited from the existing arrangement.
“In my opinion, the lack of a modern transportation system is not by accident. There are vested interests in operating the bus system the way it is,” he said.
He identified the agbero system as one of the major obstacles to reforming public transportation in Lagos, insisting that successive governments had failed to confront the problem.
“Many of us understand this notion of the agbero system that people talk about. There is no political will to deal with that problem,” the governorship candidate said.
He maintained that addressing the problem would require political commitment to dismantle the interests sustaining the existing transport arrangement.
