 The Vehicles Inspection Service, VIS, plays a major role in ensuring that necessary road worthiness is adhered to by motorists before they can access the roads. However, motorists, especially private car owners, have lamented alert extortion by VIO officials, while some others say they are sometimes responsible for gridlock on the highways in cities like Lagos, across Pondentonime, Elijah has more in this report. When the motorist is stopped, they check the car system, demand to see the driver's license, fire extinguisher, among others. These vehicle inspection officers simply identified by their acronym, VIOs, are constitutionally charged with the inspection and insurance of road worthiness certificate to all vehicles. Maintainers of sanity on our various roads and highways by ensuring that all vehicles flying such roads are road worthy at all times. Training and testing of drivers for driver's license, testing of riders for rider's card, organizing seminars and public lectures in order to educate drivers, carrying out inspection on accident vehicles, and certification of driving schools. Airing drivers who fail to comply with regulations, guiding their presence on the highway, are either fined or have their vehicles impounded. Some are even charged to the court, depending on the gravity of their offence as it concerns road unwardiness. However, one wonders how some smoky and rickety vehicles escape the road wordiness test and even the VIOs road checks. They have been allegations against the VIOs over unnecessary harassment and extortion. What is VIO? What are the functions of a VIO? Are they really doing the functions? What are they doing? What are they doing on the road? They should tell us. They'll see a car with a bad tire, they're not doing anything to it, except they collect money. So what? You just pack some junk of people, they're not going for seminar, nobody's telling them, these are your code of conduct, this is what you are supposed to do on the road. What are they doing? If you look the way they behave, you will know that somehow they are cruel when dealing with drivers and all those things. So most times, if they ask you things about vehicles, then you have to provide everything. The next thing you will see, they will look for something that is irrelevant, maybe something that is not really things that are within their jurisdiction to ask. You'll see them asking you. Then before, when they find out that there's nothing they can get you from, they start bringing out some illegal excuses that generates fund or anything. Well, vehicle inspection officers, I don't think they are efficient because, you know, just looking, you don't even need to just pull, you don't need to pull every vehicle over. Most of the commercial vehicles, looking at them, you know that they are not supposed to be on the road. Abumumi Indidi is a member representing Lagos Central Senatorial District in the Nigerian Youth Parliament. He believes it is important to have the VIOs on the road to sensitize drivers and checkmate those taking the road wilderness with levity. To say that VIOs should not be on our road, I think that will be wrong. It's important to have them in existence, maybe not on the road, because what they need to do is to be strategic in sensitization as well as be strategic in going to where they can find those vehicles and ensure that even before they come to the road, they are worthy to be on the road. Perhaps to beat some of the polluted officers back to shape, the agency needs to be restructured. The issue with the VIO is not isolated from the issues with other security or monitoring agencies that we have in the country. Let me say uniform men in the country. The road safety, the police officers, everything you see these guys do, they emanate from the norms of we the people of the society. So it's not as if it's written in their modus operandi that they should go about harassing people. So for the VIOs, the best thing is to restructure the agency, ensure that they don't necessarily need to be on the road. They need to go to those places where they can find these vehicles. Most times personal vehicles don't have these faults. The ones that have the faults can be picked off rather than having last mile on the road, VIO on the road, road safety on the road, police on the road and each of them having almost similar duties with the same motorists. Some VIOs activities are banned in some states and even the federal capital territory. For instance, in Abuja, the VIO is banned from removing the number plate of the defaulting motorists when they are arrested while in Delta State, a lawyer won an appeal court victory, stopping the VIO from checking private cars on the highway. In Lagos in 2017, the VIO was banned from operating on Lagos roads, according to the government of Ambode then. It was to enrich free flow of traffic in the state. However, their site is still very visible. Efforts to speak with the authorities of the VIO in Lagos have proved abortive.