Court sentences bus driver for obstructing traffic

Chat212 - Mail News... Report

►A 35-year-old man, Akintunde Fasuru, was on Monday sentenced to 20 hours of community service for causing an obstruction to traffic.

►Fasuru was arraigned on one count of reckless driving at the Magistrate’s Court, Tinubu, Lagos Island.

The prosecutor told the court that the defendant was arrested along Ajah Road for driving in a reckless manner. He also told the court that the defendant admitted during questioning that his driving license had expired.

The defendant, it was gathered, lost his job in May 2014. His wife, who is also unemployed, works as his bus conductor.

Fasuru told the court that he stopped at MRS filing station on the insistence of his passengers for them to alight from the bus and was arrested in the process.

“I initially did not want to stop at that filling station, but when the passengers insisted that I stop there for them to alight, I decided to oblige them,” he said.

The charge read,“That you, Akintunde Fasuru, on September 8, 2014, at about 9.40am along Addo Road, Ajah, in the Lagos Magisterial district, did in a reckless or negligent manner as to endanger human lives or to be likely to cause harm to any other person, drive one commercial Volkswagen T4 bus marked, LAGOS GGE 442 XC, and thereby committed an offence punishable under Section 249(9) (a) of the Criminal Law of Lagos State of Nigeria, 2011.”

Fasuru pleaded guilty to the charge.

His counsel, O.O. Akinpelu, pleaded with the court for leniency, saying the defendant and his wife were forced into the business as a result of “negative life circumstances”. He also told the court that the defendant was a first time offender.

The magistrate, O.M. Ajayi, subsequently sentenced the defendant to 20 hours of community service.