Okey Sampson, Umuahia
Over 10 personnel of the Traffic and Indiscipline Management Agency of Abia State (TIMAAS) were sacked for bribery, in addition to a sizeable number suspended for other acts of indiscipline, in the first quarter of 2020, the agency says.
TIMAAS General Manager/Commandant Bright Chinedu Ikokwu, who made the disclosure in Aba at the weekend, said that the agency would not take kindly to motorists who would want to bribe his men.
‘I have received reports of my personnel taking bribes from motorists, but we don’t take that kindly. A lot of them have been sacked; many others are on suspension for the same offence. Henceforth, we will also not take it kindly with those who offer our men bribe,’ he declared.
‘In the first quarter of this year alone, we have over 10 persons that have been sacked. I’m not including those that are on suspension, and it is to curb this that we introduced name tags for all our officers so that the bad ones could easily be identified.’
The commandant disclosed that TIMAAS impounded over 100 vehicles in the first quarter of the year, saying that the agency’s interest was not in impounding peoples’ vehicles, though part of her job, but that it was more concerned with instilling discipline in motorists.
While advising his men not to be involved in acts of bribery, Ikokwu warned motorists in the state to obey traffic rules and stop offering bribes to TIMAAS officials, saying if he could arrest his biological brother for a traffic offence, he would not spare anybody.
On fines the agency has imposed on traffic offenders which are seen to be on the high side, the TIMAAS boss noted that charges for offenders were not arbitrary but within the purview of the law that set it up.
‘We have been very lenient with traffic offenders in the state to the point we’ve not sent any person who ran against the flow of traffic to a psychiatric hospital for examination as the law demands, but that does mean we will not do that in time,’ he suggested.
He informed that the agency, which was established in 2015 but started operations in 2016 after its men were trained at the Federal Road Safety Corps School, Udi, Enugu State, has succeeded in rekindling discipline on Abia roads.
Ikokwu stated that the agency, whose operations are limited to Aba and Umuahia presently, would be extended to other parts of the state before the end of September.