Anambra government declared on Tuesday in Onitsha that it would track down and deal with those extorting tricycle operators in the commercial town and environs.
Chike Ohamobi, commissioner for transport, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that it was disheartening that tricycle operators were being forced to pay N3000 each daily to some touts.
Commercial tricycles were introduced into Nigeria’s transportation landscape by the President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration through the National Poverty Eradication Programme as one of the means of eradicating poverty by providing jobs for unemployed Nigerians.
Ohamobi said that the ministry had set up a combined security task force to tackle those behind the extortion and their backers who “send miscreants to collect monies forceful and illegally from the tricycle operators daily”.
