One of the greatest paradoxes of our time is the fact that Nigerian roads host more law-enforcement road-blocks per kilometre of roads than any other country in the West African sub-region.
And yet more smuggled goods manage to find their ways into the country than into any other country in the sub-region.
A testimony to this fact came recently when the Federal Government un-banned certain categories of goods like motor vehicles, used clothing and other consumables on the grounds that government was losing taxable revenues due to it through the activities of smugglers who routinely ferried in these prohibited items.
Which leads to the question: How is it possible that smugglers are able to run rings round all the law-enforcement check-points on our roads and border posts? The simple answer which government has belatedly acknowledged is that the check-points serve no serious security or revenue generating purposes.
They instead serve as illegal toll-gates for officials who man them to extort money from smugglers and legitimate travellers using the nation s highways.
No where is this conclusion most apparent than on the highway that leads from Lagos to the Eastern Region and back.
By a conservative estimate, there are about 50 check-points manned by the Police, Customs and Excise or Military personnel, ostensibly to check and arrest criminals, smugglers or traffickers in certain categories of goods or human beings.
In spite of a subsisting order from the Inspector General of Police (IGP), that all stationary check points along the nation s highways especially in the Eastern parts of the country be dismantled, the presence of assorted check-points manned by a motley of security agencies along the highway leading from Lagos to the East and vice versa has continued to agitate the minds of observers.
It is easy to understand that the law-enforcement agencies have a duty to protect road users from the menace of bandits and other deviants lurking along the highways to dispossess them of lives and property. In this wise, the presence of these security agents on our highways can be appreciated.
But when these road-blocks turn out to be no more than toll collecting points, then the purpose is defeated and the problem becomes very worrisome, indeed.
A situation where road users, motorists and innocent passengers in commercial vehicles travelling to join their kith and kin to celebrate Christmas and New Year, are subjected to un-dignifying searches that include the perusal of luggages containing personal effects, in the guise of checking for weapons or smuggled goods, calls for severe censure.
Some of the other officials who mount these road-blocks ask for all manner of vehicle papers and other irrelevancies, the real purpose of which is to have an excuse to delay, frustrate and extort money from the travellers who also have the bad roads to contend with.
What makes the whole matter intractable is that most times, the check-points are mounted by rogue law-enforcement officials acting illegally and with all the apparatus of state power, including rifles, official vans and communications gear.
To make trips on the nation s highways, especially the Lagos-Onitsha highway bearable, the IGP must endeavour to dismantle these check points, especially those that are clearly extortion points, without compromising the security of travelers.
This can be done through intensive and effective patrol of the highways and the establishment of telephone hotlines that victims of these extortionists can call to get some official relief.
Now that the Christmas and New Year holidays are here, and there is the usual mass movement to the East and back, the heads of the security agencies, especially the IGP, must do all in their power to check-mate these unscrupulous rogue officials who hide under official cover to delay, frustrate, harass, extort and sometimes kill or injure fellow citizens in their pursuit of filthy lucre.
The time to act is now because, as they say, a stitch in time saves nine.
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