By Muhammad Abdullahi, Abuja
No fewer than one hundred and fifteen commercial motorcycles popularly known as Okada were confiscated yesterday during a raid by officials of the FCT Directorate of Road Traffic Services (DRTS) otherwise known as Vehicle Inspection Office (VIO), in Kubwa area of Bwari Area Council, Abuja.
The DRTS officials in a joint operation with FCTA Command and Control Taskteam on city Sanitation which lasted for hours clampdown on the Okada operators from various hotspots within the Kubwa metropolis, for allegedly flaunting the ban on Okada and constituting nuisance in the area.
Blueptint gathered that the enforcement Team raided major Kubwa streets notorious for okada operations including a two storey building, an unoccupied residential house situated at number 214 Bakori Road, where over 30 motorcycles were discovered and confiscated.
Speaking after the exercise, Head of FCT DTRS Taskteam, Adamu Shehu Maiwada , explained that the joint operation aimed at riding the city of the environmental and security concerns from the operations of commercial motorcyclists within Kubwa and prohibited areas of the nation’s capital city.
Maiwada noted that although okada have been banned in terms of operating in Kubwa and other designated places in the city, the operators are bent on causing all sorts of nuisance in the city.
He however reiterated that the Taskforce will not relent to sustain the exercise, so as to rid the city of such menace.
“Preliminary report generated so far revealed that we have caught over one 115 motorcycles during today’s operation, in Kubwa.
“Everyday, we are out there on the streets, clamping down on contravening okada riders, which we will continue until order is maintained.
” In order to sustain the tempo of this kind of raid, we are going to keep going after them, to ensure that there’s strict compliance with the ban on operations of commercial motorcyclists in anywhere around Kubwa and other parts of the city centre”, he stated.