On New Year’s Eve, while the world looked forward to 2025, a poultry farmer was subjected to an embarrassing and painful experience at the Jibowu Chisco Transport Park in Lagos because he questioned an anomaly that could have put his children in harm’s way.
Nnaemeka Ngenejiofor, a trader and poultry farmer, told FIJ that he got to the Jibowu Chisco Park around 3 pm on Tuesday to book transport tickets. Two of his three children were going to Abuja.
The problem started around 6 pm when the vehicles were getting ready to begin the journey.
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“Around 6 pm, they announced that every passenger going to Abuja should go out for their luggage to be checked and for them to board. So, I came out with my children,” Ngenejiofor recounted.
“I saw one vehicle standing there, the other one was going to Port Harcourt. When I checked the ticket given to me, the plate number I saw there was quite different. I didn’t see the vehicle with such (a) number. I then asked which was going to Abuja as I could not see the number on any vehicle.”
Ngenejiofor said that a man responded and pointed him to the bus going to Abuja. “But I made him know that the plate number on the ticket was different from the one I was seeing on the vehicle. When I asked why, he said that was the way they did things there. That they do things the way they like as long as Chisco appears on the receipt.”
When he told the man that such practice was improper, the man became upset.
The day went sour when Ngenejiofor brought out his mobile phone to photograph the number plate on the luxury bus conveying his children to Abuja.
“The man snatched my phone immediately. He said I cannot capture the number plate. When I asked why they couldn’t do things right, he said it was none of my business. I also asked him to give me my phone but he refused. Before I knew it, he started calling others. Even, they called touts, agberos, from outside,” Ngenejiofor said.
Before he could figure out what was going on, up to six men joined hands to beat him. They eventually threw him out of the park.
He would not have had proof of the disparity between the plate number on the ticket and the one on the vehicle if not for an earlier picture of his three children he had taken close to the vehicle which showed a bit of the number plate on the vehicle conveying his children to Abuja.
While the plate number recorded on the ticket read ‘SMK 183 SM’, the one on the vehicle began with ‘LSR.’
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An earlier picture of his three children he had taken close to the vehicle. PHOTO CREDIT: Nnaemeka Ngenejiofor.
Ngenejiofor said that before the thugs threw him out of the park, they took his pictures and tagged him as a kidnapper. It was not until another man who worked at the park allowed him back in before he could see his children again after which they also released his phone to his son.
Remembering the assault, Ngenejiofor said though his assaulters were about six unknown men, a man named ‘Friday’ hit him repeatedly. “He is tall, dark. He came from outside the park. Maybe one of the touts who works with them,” Ngenejiofor told FIJ.
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He also said that a fat, tall and fair-skinned man named ‘Awua’ took his photograph. “He was the one who ordered them to beat me up and throw me out of station. He was the one that took my photograph and called me kidnapper,” Ngenejiofor said.
Another old fair-skinned man, white-bearded and well advanced in age, seized Ngenejiofor’s phone. It was from him he later heard Friday’s name.
“When I complained to the lady selling tickets, she asked the baba who beat me, and the baba said Friday. She started laughing when she heard ‘Friday’,” Ngenejiofor recalled.
FIJ called Benjamin Hundeyin, the Lagos Police Public Relations Officer, twice on Friday, but he did not answer the phone. The SMS FIJ sent to him to ask if the Lagos Police knew about the number plate disparity at parks and to know if the police would investigate Ngenejiofor’s assault, had not been responded to at press time.
When FIJ called Chisco’s inquiry telephone line, a female voice identified herself as Oluwatobi and said Chisco was unaware of the incident. She asked FIJ to share Ngenejiofor’s phone number on WhatsApp. The Chisco representative also said she would call the Jibowu park to inquire about the issue. “We don’t beat our customers at Chisco,” she said.
When she called FIJ again on WhatsApp, she said she had contacted Chisco’s manager at Jibowu Park and that something of the sort happened but Ngenejiofor was not beaten.
“So, he was able to give me information that something like that happened concerning the ticket. You know when customers book ahead on the website, then we allocate seats and vehicles to these customers. But when you get to the terminal, it’s possible that the bus the passenger was supposed to use became faulty, and it would be uncalled for to still try to manage that vehicle.”
When FIJ told her that Ngenejiofor did not book the ticket on the Chisco website, but at the park, she insisted that Ngenejiofor was not beaten.
“Yes, there was a little delay because the vehicle on that ticket was having issues, so they had to get another vehicle, and since the vehicle was boarded at our terminal, whatever happens, we would bear the consequences. So, the aspect of the man being beaten, there was nothing like that at all. He was not beaten,” she insisted.
Oluwatobi was yet to contact Ngenejiofor at press time.
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