Returning home safely is a prayer of every Nigerian ‘hustler’. But for Lagos bus conductors, returning home without a broken head or missing teeth call is a cause for thanksgiving.

Years after the Lagos State Government harmonisation bill on transport levy, Agberos still beat up and damage vehicles of commercial bus operators.

Daily, commercial bus conductors battle miscreants identified as members of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) to ply Lagos roads. Promises by the Lagos State government to finally put an end to the impunity have not been fulfilled.

To address extortion on the roads which caused the crisis, the Lagos State Government, in January 2022, introduced a daily consolidated informal transport sector levy of N800 per commercial transporter.

The then commissioner for Finance, Dr Rabiu Olowo, said the harmonised levy became necessary to ensure the state’s transport sector was better organised to fit a 21st-century economy.

Olowo said the state government anticipates that once a transporter pays the N800 at a point, he is not expected to pay at any other park or bus stop throughout the day.

He boasted that the consolidated levy would reduce the multiplicity of collections as many residents and transporters had already complained about the huge levies unions take in the state.

He also cited a report about an alleged N150 billion collected by transport unions in the state under the guise of dues, stressing that the new policy would eliminate multiple levies and dues.

While the government’s intention was viewed to be the right call that would harmonise the charges drivers paid daily, the move has failed to end settlement for ‘agberos’ at each of the parks of bus stops.

Agbero operation in Lagos is viewed as more than collecting union dues but also as a scheme to empower political party loyalists who allegedly work for politicians during elections.

It was alleged that a politician was instructed to win an election in his or her area and get compensated with a bus stop or allowed to collect tolls in her area.

While the government has denied this, it could not state why the government has failed to take these guys off the road.

On Wednesday, May 28, 2025, six Agbero pounced on a one-eyed bus conductor, slapping him after he was dragged out of the bus. Despite efforts to resist them, he paid some thousands of naira to rescue himself.

The members of the NURTW were assaulting the bus conductor while police officers who were clearing the road ahead of President Bola Tinubu’s visit to the state for the 50th Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) meeting, watched.

When asked about the 2022 transport harmonisation, Director of Transport Operations, Olasunkanmi Ojowuro, said: “One thing I would like Nigerians to understand is that the challenges we have in the transportation sector are not limited to movement, it has to do with high insecurity, breakdown of law and order and other crisis. Not all these guys on the road demanding money from drivers are members of the transport union(s). There are other gangs on the road demanding money, and there are kingpins. So, we are battling vices.

“We are trying to achieve a cashless policy for the payment of transportation fares so, when passengers are no longer paying cash, drivers or conductors will have no cash to pay to them, and they will have a more formal way to collect dues.”

On why the miscreants are not being arrested, he said: “We are Nigerians, what is happening in the transport sector is like when you are trying to build and some show up that they are Omo Onile and ask you to pay before commencing work. That is where we have found ourselves. This is more than the transportation sector.

“The Nigeria Police Force (NPF) should arrest the guys. If any is arrested, the assaulted people will not appear before the court to testify. Some who are arrested and even jailed return to the road after being released.”

When asked if politicians are given bus stops to manage, he said: “I cannot answer that I am limited to the transportation sector. I am not a politician. We have challenges and everyone should come together to solve them.”