Anambra: Residents express worry as ‘official’ touts take over

Mrs Josephine Eze (not real name) is a journalist with a respected daily newspaper based in Lagos State. She is a senior correspondent, who covers the crime and education beats for the newspaper. She was recently in the east, to attend her mother-in-law’s burial, and on a fateful Wednesday, she was driving her family back to Lagos when she was apprehended in Onitsha, and her vehicle impounded.

According to her, she was driving behind another vehicle which was going to Lagos too, and suddenly she missed the vehicle because of the traffic.

“I drove to a safe place and cleared off the road entirely to make calls to the other driver about his whereabouts, then suddenly, some people wearing yellow vests charged at me and collected my car keys and forcefully took us to a place they said is their office. They charged me for wrongful parking.”

Mrs Eze insisted that she didn’t get out of the car, and that the idea of parking before making a call was in order not to contravene the law of making calls while driving. She pleaded that she was driving her children to Lagos and needed to make the journey that day, but she was ignored until she coughed out N30,000