Nigeria: Lagos commences cashless toll payment

Lagos State Government on Thursday commenced the cashless policy for toll payments at Lekki/ Ikoyi Link bridge toll- plaza as earlier announced.

It would be recalled that the State Government had last year announced that it would go cashless on toll payments at the Lekki/ Ikoyi toll plaza effective from 1st January 2020 due to huge traffic gridlocks often experienced on the corridor with cash payments. Commissioner for Transportation Lagos state, Frederic 0ladeinde, who monitored the cashless toll payments at the toll plaza early Thursday along with the Managing Director, Lekki Concession Company Limited, (LCC) Yomi Omomuwasan stated that the new cashless policy is aimed at reducing traffic queue length often experienced during cash payments regime to save travel time and ease traffic movement along the corridor.

Oladeinde noted that the new cashless toll payments has brought significant improvement on vehicular movement at the toll plaza compared with the previous situation, he added that there was a need to educate residents on the need to imbibe the new system through compliance because of its advantage on free flow of traffic.

He frowned at some motorists who he said wanted to deliberately sabotage the new policy for their selfish gains, disclosing that some motorists made photocopies of their payment vouchers for multiple uses.

He warned that the State Government would not hesitate to apply the law on any motorists that attempted to frustrate its effort at improving traffic movements through corrupt practices. “I just want to appeal to Lagosians to embrace this new initiative introduced by this government as it would help us improve traffic movements along the corridor, any form of criminality or corrupt practices such as photocopying of payment vouchers or similar vices will not be condoned as such would be treated as a criminal case when caught’’ the Commissioner warned.

While expressing optimism that the new toll- cashless policy would be a very good experience for Lagosians when it is fully stabilized, the Commissioner explained that for close to 3 hours that the officials were monitoring vehicular movements at the toll plaza, no motorist spent more than one to two seconds before they were electronically passed, having shown their e- payment vouchers or other devices, those that had delays were the recalcitrant ones who were not ready to comply with any of the four cashless payment options as earlier stated.