A compere based in Oyo State has accused the thugs attached to one of the park managers in the state of assaulting him in the Iwo Road area of Ibadan, the state capital.

In a Facebook post on Tuesday evening, the compere, who asked not to be named for fear of victimisation, narrated how he and his brother were physically assaulted by the park managers.

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“It happened this afternoon. I was driving around the Iwo Road interchange and I saw the convoy of the NURTW chairman in Ọ̀yọ́ state (sorry, the chairman of the park management system of Oyo State) coming behind,” he told FIJ.

“In a bid to clear the traffic jam at the front, his boys came down from various cars behind and ordered all the taxis on the road to steer clear so that their boss could pass freely, as police/army would do for a governor to pass. As I wanted to move because I wasn’t driving a Micra (Ìbàdàn taxi) neither was I driving a commercial bus, two of the agberos ordered me to park, and before I could say anything, one of them ran to me and gave me a blow on my face. Another one went straight to the other side and gave my younger brother who was sitting beside me in the car a blow directly on his face too.

“I wasn’t obstructing the convoy of Engr. Seyi Makinde, the Executive Governor of Oyo State, or the convoy of the Chief of Army Staff. It wasn’t even a bullion van I obstructed. Even the convoy of the present Oyo State governor would never have done such to a civilian like me.

“I was given a blow because I was driving on my own around Iwo Road in Ibadan and I didn’t park on the orders of the agberos because I believed I was never answerable to them.”

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The friend said that he reluctantly begged the park manager who abused him, despite the aggression.

“In fact, I didn’t know their boss’ SUV was directly behind me, not until he rolled his glass down and started to abuse me,” he said.

“If not because I apologised to him and he ordered his boys to allow me go, those agberos would have started denting my car with the sticks they were holding.”

In February 2020, Makinde inaugurated motor park managers to manage the affairs of drivers in the state, in order to boost the internally generated revenue (IGR).

While the Park Management System (PMS) was largely conceived to replace the old National Union of Road Workers (NURTW), the governor was largely criticised for appointing Alhaji Lamidi ‘Auxillary’ Mukaila, a former NURTW chairman, as head of the committee.

Auxiliary was once sentenced to six years in prison for conspiracy to murder at the time NURTW was repressing citizens’ rights.

The compere’s experience mirrors the genesis of NURTW’s arbitrary use of power under past administrations in Oyo State.