Sanwo-Olu orders police to impound vehicles with covered number plate

Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babajide Sanwo–Olu has directed Rapid Response Squad to impound vehicles with covered number plate in the state.

Head of Public Affairs Unit, Rapid Response Squad, Femi Moliki, in a statement, on Sunday, said six vehicles without number plate had been impounded after the directive.

In the statement titled, ‘Sanwo-Olu orders police to impound vehicles with covered number plate’, Moliki said, “Five of the vehicles have been transferred to the Lagos State Taskforce on Environmental Sanitation and Special Offences. The sixth, a Mercedes Benz, ML 350 was intercepted and impounded in Victoria Island  by the officers of the squad around 9:30 p.m. yesterday (Saturday).

“The driver of the vehicle, one Adam Oluremi, 32, threatened and mobilised a military man to shoot the officers. The officers professionally de-escalated the crisis and successfully towed vehicle to RRS Headquarters.”

Receiving a briefing on the issue, the Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Mr Hakeem Odumosu, directed that the vehicle be impounded and the driver prosecuted, maintaining that “nobody is above the law of the land”.

Meanwhile, RRS Commander, CSP Olayinka Egbeyemi, has charged officers of the squad to be professional in the discharge of their responsibilities, maintaining that they should be civil and firm in enforcing the law.

He urged the officers to be dedicated and not to give room for distractions while on duty.

Egbeyemi stated that law-abiding Lagosians should look forward to a robust relationship, noting that the squad would be uncompromising with criminals.

Lagos battles indifference as virus ‘tsunami’ looms

Hospitals in Lagos are facing a tidal wave of Covid as the authorities warn of the dangers from a new viral strain, yet many people in Nigeria’s mega-city seem indifferent.

The New Year’s break saw thousands of people gathered on the city’s beaches for fun and relaxation, and social distancing was as rare as mask-wearing.

At night, young people have been crowding blithely into the city’s discotheques — for those stopped at curfew roadblocks, a small banknote slipped into a policeman’s hand has often been enough to ease any problems.

Gaudy weddings have taken place without a hitch, sometimes with a hundred or so guests, double the 50 officially allowed for gatherings.

Denial or insouciance in this famously bustling city seem widespread.

“If I feel ill, I’ll do the test for malaria, not for Covid, it doesn’t kill,” said Ali, a 27-year-old taxi driver.

Tsunami

The city’s government and medical community have multiplied warnings, urging people to wear masks, respect social distancing and obey the curfew.

“We are well into the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. Yesterday, Lagos scarily recorded its highest number of infections in one day,” Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu said on Tuesday.

“This second wave comes with severe symptoms and (a) higher number of positive cases,” he said. “2021 will only work for us if we take #COVID19 seriously.”

According to official figures, Lagos — a city of around 20 million souls — has so far notched up 33,329 cases of coronavirus, of which 250 have been fatal, in a national tally of 94,369 cases, 1,324 of them fatal.

But these figures, in a population of around 200 million, Africa’s largest, are likely to be far short of the true tally, given the paucity of testing.

At Paelon Memorial Hospital, a private facility in the business district of Victoria Island, managing director Ngozi Onyia likened the surge in cases to a “tsunami” rather than merely a second wave.

“My phones are ringing off the hook,” she said.

said.

“I’m making tough calls — who to take into the treatment centre, who to put on one of our four ventilators — ethical decisions I’ve never had to make in 38-plus years.”

At Lagos University Hospital, a public facility, director Chris Bode said Covid’s resurgence “is ravaging our land, claiming many lives.”

He blamed the second wave on a new local viral strain that he said was “deadlier” than the first — an assertion that for now is not supported by the variant’s discoverers.

Vaccine cavalry

The authorities are stepping up well-worn appeals to prevent viral spread, although social distancing in the crowded streets, markets and public transport of Lagos is notoriously difficult.

Even so, “prevention messaging is the best approach” for now, said Yap Boum of Epicentre, the research branch of Doctors Without Borders (MSF).

Like other countries, Nigeria is looking urgently to vaccines to stop and reverse the tide.

The government says it hopes to receive 100,000 doses by the end of January and inoculate 40 percent of the population by the end of the year.

Already, rich countries are finding vaccination to be a major task, both in securing sufficient supplies and administering formulas that have to be kept extremely cold.

But it is an even greater undertaking in a large underdeveloped country like Nigeria, where transport problems and unreliable power supplies can disrupt the cold chain.

Sanwo-Olu rewards best graduating students of LASU with 5million naira each.

The governor of Lagos state , Sanwo-Olu revealed the news via his Twitter page;

Today, as part of our promise to reward academic excellence in Lagos State, I presented cheques of N5 million each to the best graduating students of the Undergraduate and Masters programmes of the Lagos State University.

Shotunde Oladimeji Idris, the best graduating student was also offered automatic employment into the state’s civil service as we continue to improve the attractiveness of our civil service for the state’s best brains.

At the start of this administration, improving education in the state was highlighted as one of my biggest priorities, and we demonstrated commitment by increasing budgetary allocation to the sector as we work on improving the quality of our curriculums & welfare of our students.

#Covid19 :Sanwo-Olu extends public servant’s holiday for 2weeks.

Lagos State governor, Mr Babajide Olusola Sanwo-Olu, has extended the stay-at-home order for all State Public Servants on Grade Levels 14 and below to Monday, January 18, 2021, to stem the tide of the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Head of Service (HoS), Mr Hakeem Muri-Okunola, said this, on Sunday, in a signed statement, noting that the directive excludes staff on essential duty as well as First Responders.

Muri-Okunola urged all public servants to stay safe and ensure continued adherence to all COVID-19 protocols in order to rid the state of the pandemic.

Baruwa gas explosion victims write Sanwo-Olu, demand N4bn compensation.

Over 30 persons, who lost loved ones, got injured or lost properties in the gas explosion that happened in the Baruwa area of Lagos on October 8, have written a pre-action letter to the Governor of Lagos State, Mr Babajide Sanwo-Olu, demanding N4bn as compensation for their losses.

The victims made the demand in an October 19, 2020 letter written to the governor by their lawyer, Akeem Fadun.

Fadun, who said the incident was blamable on government’s failure to act when the residents raised an alarm back in February 2018, said his clients should be compensated so they could get their lives back on track.

“Our clients have suffered varying degrees of damage, including death of family and kin, maiming and burning of loved ones, complete destruction of properties, such as shops, schools and homes.

“As it stands, many of the victims sleep in makeshift sheds amid the ruins left behind by the inferno, and others roam hopelessly, having lost their means of livelihood to the inferno.

“One of our clients lost his wife and three children at a go; another lost his brother and son; another, his brother and benefactor. Others have spouses with third-degree burns that will require further surgery, if they survive, to try to lessen the scarring and contracture; the list goes on. Some of the victims have had to assign permanent guards to other victims who have displayed symptoms of severe depression, anxiety attacks and even made suicidal utterances,” Fadun said.

The lawyer, while describing the explosion as man-made and a clear case of government systemic failure to delivery on its statutory function to protect citizens’ lives and property, recalled how upon writing a save-our-soul letter to the government back in 2018 calling for the removal of Best Roof Gas Station from the neighbourhood, the response of the Lagos State Ministry of Physical Planning and Urban Development  was to demand payment of N689,500 from the residents for the likely removal of the gas station.