Business activities were, on Saturday, grounded in Onitsha, the commercial city of Anambra State as tricycle operators protested alleged extortion and brutality of members in the hands of touts and revenue collectors.
The group, known as Tricycle Owners Association of Nigeria (TOAN), also blocked major roads in the city.
The protest also followed the alleged multiple stabbing of a tricycle operator on the Awka road by a revenue collector. The group lamented that their sufferings in the hands of the touts were becoming unbearable and called on the state government to come to their rescue by deploying security personnel to the area.
The protest started about 12.30pm and lasted several hours while they blocked the Main Market road, Awka Road, New Cemetery Road, Old Cemetery Road, Old Enugu Road, and other exits and entry points of Onitsha.
Addressing journalists, the spokesman for the group, Mr. David Emmanuel, said that they had taken enough humiliation from both legal and illegal revenue collectors in the state. He added that they pay between N4,500 N8,000 to the revenue collectors apart from the N350 daily dues they pay to the Anambra State Government.
Emmanuel lamented that while they had nothing to show for their daily efforts, the revenue collectors and thugs smiled home with huge sums of money.
He said, “We wondered why even after such money is collected from us, they beat and wound us, you dare not question their identity. Several complaints we made to the Anambra State Ministry of Transport did not yield any result.
“We pay money to a group, before you move an inch, another group will stop you and if you question them, they would start beating you, using all types of weapons against you, that is one of the causes of today’s protest, they have killed and given life threatening injuries to our members just because we want to know who we are giving our money.
“We give money to people we don’t know who they are working for, all they know is for you to give them money, that is not covered by receipt, and some operate with receipts we do not know their source.
“We don’t go home with anything after daily settling of both legal and illegal revenue agents, we will not leave the roads until government come and address and hear us, they pretend not to know what we are going through because it is the monster they created that is working against us.
“We are practically working for these criminal revenue agents who hide under working for government to extort all sums of money from us. We are busy working, toiling under the sun and rain and illegal revenue agents are forcefully collecting our money and drinking beer in our presence with our money.
The State Media Coordinator, TOAN, Mr. Uzir Uzir, confirmed that the tricycle operators’ grievances were genuine and called on relevant authorities to look into their plight.
Attempt to get the reaction of the State police spokesman, DSP Ikenga Tochukwu, proved abortive as he did not respond to calls put across to his phone as of the time of filing this report.