The Labour Party (LP) governorship candidate in Lagos State, Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour, has vowed not to tolerate touting aka ‘Agbero’ system, which he said had characterize the governance of the State.
Rhodes-Vivour made this promise on Sunday while espousing his programme at The Platform debate organised for governorship candidates in the State.
The incumbent governor, Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu, had expressly declined to participate in the debate.
According to Rhodes-Vivour, the ‘Agbero’ system has created lots of bottlenecks and safety hazards in Lagos State over time.
He specifically said: “On road safety in Lagos State, we will not accept the ‘Agbero’ system, which has created a lot of safety hazards in the State.
“We need to train our road enforcement agents and we will also need to ensure that the state set its clear policy on not accepting the Agbero system. All of these, you can only enforce where a system is moving smoothly.
“Our own focus is making sure that we are back on a system that is working smoothly. We are also going to have digital surveillance all across the state so that we can enforce with evidence, not just hearsay anymore.
“So, the enforcement officers that do not step up to their responsibilities can actually be held accountable and we can hold them to account with evidence,” he said.
Rhodes-Vivour noted that the rail transportation system that the state is currently building must take into consideration the moving of cargoes.
“The fact that we are moving so many containers by road is damaging our roads and it’s creating very low life expectancy for the roads we have and also leading to accidents like what happened today.
Other governorship candidates who participated in the debate included Olufunso Doherty of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Abdul-Azeez Adediran of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP).