Despite road worthiness certificates not being issued for free by the Lagos State government, many who paid for the service do not have it rosy getting their certificates from the Vehicle Inspection Service (VIS). This is even in cases where the vehicle has passed the computerised inspection test of being road worthy, an investigation by The Guardian has revealed.

A resident of Lagos had complained to The Guardian that officers of the VIS, citing examples of officers at the Daleko centre, always put bottlenecks to the easy acquisition of the certificate after paying for the service and the vehicles successfully going through the inspection test.

To verify the allegations of the motorist, The Guardian reporter took his car to the centre for his vehicle’s road worthiness certificate on January 26, 2024.

After presenting the vehicle for inspection and test, a note was issued that the vehicle was roadworthy, as it scaled through the inspection and test successfully. The next step was to present the note to the Vehicle Inspection Officer (VIO) on duty to issue the original road worthiness certificate.

When the VIS officer on duty was approached with the note of the vehicle passing the inspection test, he said there was no road worthiness certificate to be issued. When the officer was asked how soon would the certificate be ready, he said, “in a week’s time.”

The officer also provided a caveat that since the 60 days provided for the vehicle roadworthiness test to be conducted would expire in 10 days time, the certificate must be collected before then or else the Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) machines installed on CCTV cameras across the state by government would capture the vehicle for non procurement of the certificate even when the vehicle has passed the test.

When he was asked why it should be so, since the car had passed the test just that the certificate had not been issued; he said “it has not been imputed in the VIS system that the test has been done successfully.”

So, exactly a week after the vehicle test was done, that was February 2, 2024 and three days to when the 60 days for the test to be conducted would expire, the centre was visited again for the certificate to be issued.

Luckily, the same officer was on duty. When he was approached for the certificate, he said there was no one ready yet. He gave another five days to the reporter to return and check if the certificate would be available.

With this, The Guardian called one of the vehicle owners whose car was also inspected and tested for being road worthy at the centre same day, if he had been issued the worthiness certificate for his car. He responded in the affirmative, revealing he got the certificate same day.

When the motorist was asked how he got the certificate same day despite his vehicle’s inspection and test was conducted after that of the reporter, he said he was initially told that road worthiness certificate was not available, but after pleading with one of the VIS officers he knew at the centre, and thereafter, and tipping him, he was given an instruction on who to meet for the issuance of the road worthiness certificate. “So, I got my vehicle road worthiness certificate same day,” he said.

Fourteen days after the vehicle test was done, and certified to be road worthy, a return was made to the centre for the third time for the road worthiness certificate to be issued; the same officer was still on duty and insisted that there was no certificate to be issued.

However, after some complaint that it was the third time of making a visit to the centre, the officer said that when next a visit is made to the centre for the certificate, the document would be available to be issued, which should be in a week’s time.

Thus, in compliance with the VIS officer’s directive, a fourth visit was made to the VIS centre and the same officer was still on duty, but was gracious enough to issue the certificate this time around.

Ironically, on the three earlier occasions the VIS computerised test centre was visited, right in front of the VIS officer were road worthiness certificates displayed on his table that he was processing to be issued.

Meanwhile, while the back and forth was ongoing between the reporter and VIS officers at the centre, findings were made from officers of the ministry of transport, Motor Vehicle Administration Agency (MVAA) and Vehicle Inspection Service on whether there were shortage of certificates to be issued to motorists whose vehicles had been certified road worthy. All of them stated that there was no such challenge about non-availability of road worthiness certificates to be issued in the state.

Before now, the tradition was for vehicles’ road worthiness certificate to be issued by the VIS without physical inspection and test of the vehicles.

But from January 1, 2022, the VIS started demanding that before a vehicle is issued the road worthiness certificate, the motor must be physically inspected and tested at any of the designated computerised vehicle inspection centres across the state.