In April, a group of four men were stripped of their freedom after being arrested by the police in Lagos State.

The men, Habeeb Azeez (29), Michael Adeyeye (26), Biodun Iyiola (46) and Adeleye Dotun (27), were members of a “one-chance” robbery gang who had forced N1.4 million out of a victim during an operation in the Ilasan area of the state, according to Benjamin Hundeyin, the police spokesperson, via his X handle on April 17.

Similarly, it was on August 8 that Adedeji Oyindamola, a background vocalist at a radio station, left her home in the Maryland area of Lagos early in the morning for work at Marwa. But she ran into unexpected trouble. The private car she innocently boarded was that of “one-chance” armed robbers at Maryland Bus Stop.

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“Before I could say Jack Robinson, someone started strangling me from behind. I was pulled by three men to the middle of the vehicle and all I could think of was Jesus as I was screaming. Punches started flying from everywhere to my face,” Oyindamola explained in a report by EQ on August 16.

“My bag was taken, and I was pinned to the middle of the vehicle with my neck in the wrong posture. It was horrifying. It felt like a bad dream and I wanted to wake up. I realised there were five men in total. How do I fight off five men? So I calmed down and told myself that I’d cooperate with whatever they said.”

She was stripped naked in the car. Her attackers threatened to gang-rape her if she did not call people to send ransom money to her. She succeeded in getting N2 million from people she called. Before she was pulled out of the speeding car, they rubbed a large dose of Aboniki Balm into her eyes. A Good Samaritan who noticed her struggling for balance by the roadside offered help. She would later spend over a week for treatment in a hospital.

“One-chance” robbery is a kind of crime that involves perpetrators who invite unsuspecting passengers into a vehicle, usually during rush hours, before dispossessing them of their personal effects in transit and pushing them out of the vehicle violently, sometimes leading to death.

In another dimension, Adeyemi Ibrahim and Taiwo Adisa, according to Hundeyin, were arrested with a minibus on their way from Iju-Ishaga where they had gone early in the morning to break into a shop to steal one generator, a gas cylinder and a Bluetooth speaker.

One of the suspects standing beside the minibus used in carrying the stolen items. Source: Benjamin’s X handle.

These stories are not coincidences, they are familiar stories in many Nigerian cities. It is an organised phenomenon that contributes to the growing crime rate in Nigeria, many of which are committed via automobiles.

Lagos, with its rising human population, is particularly notorious for these kinds of stories as robbery gangs use different tactics to lure commuters into their trap daily. In a bid to catch up with flights and appointments or avoid getting late to work or home during peak hours, residents play into the hands of criminal-minded people who hail commuters randomly into their waiting vehicles by the roadside.

The government has been clear that number plates, being vehicles’ official identities, play a role in tracking criminals and saving lives on the road. But there are many dummy number plates in circulation. For this investigation, EQ manually collected several number plates to examine the strength of some state and federal initiatives road traffic authorities put in place to guarantee a safe system. EQ adopted a see-and-snap approach to data collection because going the official route of making a public record request from traffic agencies could end in futility.

Merely looking at the yellow minibus the police said Ibrahim and Adisa used to convey their loot, everything appeared fine. What stood out was not a crucifix sticker at the top middle of the bus’s rear windshield or a peace sticker beside its number plate. What particularly stood out was the number plate itself: the Lagos State number plate (AAA488YE) affixed to the back of the bus.

The number plate, also known as licence plate, vehicle tag or registration number, was not validly issued at least by the result obtained from the number plate verification portal of the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), which showed that it was “valid but yet to be assigned” to any vehicle. Yet, that bus had been using it probably for years.

ABOUT NUMBER PLATES

Up-to-date data about Nigeria’s vehicle population was not easy to find. A 2018 road transport data report by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) indicated that there were 11,760,871 vehicles in Nigeria.

Traffic regulations in Nigeria require every vehicle to have a number plate produced by the FRSC and some states.

A number plate is a flat metallic tag attached to a vehicle indicating its registration status with regulatory agencies. It carries a unique alphanumeric code linked to a vehicle’s details, including chassis number, engine number, year and model of production, type and purpose of the vehicle, colour as well as personal data of the owner.

Number plates for four-wheelers and other vehicles are usually 6 by 12 inches in size with mostly five or six-long identifiers. Generally, number plates are reflective with the shape of Nigeria’s map in the middle and its flag at the top left.

They are commonly in two types: A and B. Type A, printed with blue colour on a white background, is meant for private vehicles while B, printed with red colour on a white background, is for commercial vehicles. Typically, the first three alphabets on a number plate indicate the local government area where it was registered while the last two alphabets are for coding purposes.

But there are other categories of number plates, too. These are the ones used by government, military and paramilitary institutions, which are black and white number plates printed on a white background. Generally, licence plates are attached to the front and rear sides of vehicles, except for motorcycles or tricycles that are required to hang only one at the rear.

Despite the regulations, many vehicles operate with fake number plates jeopardising public safety. Spotting a sham tag is a tough job for ordinary citizens. Even among security agencies, it is no less easy as criminals have gone beyond regular number plates to using the types reserved for the presidency, diplomats and government institutions, with the FRSC occasionally threatening to clamp down on the fraudsters.

WHERE DO THE DATA COME FROM?

There had been no public database for Nigerians to independently verify whether a number plate was genuine. With this inability, it was not a question of if but when a driver would be accosted on the road by traffic personnel and be told that their licence plate was fake.

Spending federal taxpayer funds, the FRSC came up with the idea to create a number plate verification portal some years ago. It is unclear what year exactly, but news articles first mentioned the web-based portal in 2016, providing online access to verify the registration status of number plates.

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“Many fake number plates and faulty registration have been discovered through this platform. In fact, the security agencies have been able to track stolen vehicles as well as some vehicles used in the commission of crimes,” Bisi Kazeem, then FRSC spokesperson, spoke of the significance of the portal in 2016.

“This underscores the importance of the verification portal as a veritable tool in fighting fake vehicle registration and boosting safety as well as national security.”

Nearly a decade after its launch, the problem the FRSC said the portal would address has refused to go away. Illegitimate number plate vendors still operate almost unchecked. Worse still, racketeering within the FRSC and state vehicle administration agencies is an efficient bolster of this phenomenon. In the process of obtaining a vehicle tag, many vehicle owners have become victims, paying their hard-earned money to procure counterfeit items.

Similar to the FRSC’s portal, the State Motor Vehicle Administration Agency (MVAA) of Lagos State launched an online portal in 2016 “through which motorists and law enforcement agencies can henceforth confirm the authenticity of number plates issued by the Agency”.

The MVAA is responsible for vehicle licensing and registration in Lagos. In a December 16, 2016 official statement about the creation of the portal, Lateef Lawal, then MVAA general manager, said the platform “became necessary in order to eradicate the unnecessary harassment of licensees by officials of the Nigerian Police, FRSC and other security agencies”.

EQ’s findings, however, showed that the MVAA’s portal (www.lsmvaapvs.org) either failed to work or collapsed a few years after its creation. At press time, the information that popped up on the website was completely unrelated to anything about number plate verification in Lagos. The website displays three related searches, all of which are linked to the United States-based EpicVIN, a vehicle data provider.

A months-long investigation by EQ has identified a total of 1,738 number plates in Lagos, Ogun, Oyo and Osun. The data-gathering methodology employed was manual by visiting various public parks, streets and communities in the named states.

In terms of vehicle population, EQ saw no publicly available reliable data to show if Lagos had the highest number of vehicles. But what is clear is that the state arguably has the highest vehicle population in the country. Some online articles put it at over 5 million. By this, a considerable number of number plates can be found in the state compared to other states.

A screenshot of the abandoned MVAA’s website.

Depending on variables such as the vehicle population and people’s preference in each state, the number of registered vehicles vary from state to state. According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), 107,000 number plates were sold to vehicle owners throughout the country between April 1 and June 30, 2018. Lagos State alone accounted for 65,136 of the number plates sold between this period, representing 60.9% of the entire registrations. A good percentage of these Lagos-registered plates could have been obtained by non-residents of the state. This explains the presence of Lagos-issued number plates observed by EQ in most places in the other states visited.

If number plates were the only criterion to identify a state, one could mistake Oyo, Osun and Ogun states for Lagos. It seemed many vehicle owners had a preference for Lagos State number plates.

Within the same period, 2,040 vehicle tags were registered in Oyo. Ogun and Osun issued 640 and 592 respectively.

Relative to other states, data collection was seamless in Lagos largely because of the vehicle population in the state and the certainty of a vehicle bearing the state’s number plate.

For this investigation, a total of 1,068 number plates were gathered through the see-and-snap approach. Starting in May, EQ visited a number of areas, including Ikorodu, Ketu, Ojota, Opebi, Ogba, CMS, Ipaja, Iyana-Ipaja, Lekki-Ajah and Ikeja, across Lagos.

EQ identified 210 number plates in Ogun. Places visited in this state included Sagamu and Abeokuta. While 242 tags were obtained from Iwo Road, Agodi-Gate and Mokola in Oyo; 217 were gathered from Iwo and Osogbo in Osun.

STATE-BY-STATE ANALYSIS

Done with data collection. What followed was the extraction of the data into spreadsheets for proper structuring. Then, we turned to the verification portal to uncover the status of the validity of the data. This was not just an effort to confirm the authenticity of number plates in circulation, but also to test the accuracy and reliability of the database.

A screenshot of the FRSC’s verification portal showing a number plate is “valid but yet to be assigned”.

The portal gives different results depending on the status of a number plate. If a number plate is properly registered, the portal comes up with “valid and assigned to the vehicle details below” and shows the vehicle make and colour. Currently, one cannot remotely view vehicle specifications, ownership history, information, traffic violation records, theft history and other specific details peculiar to a vehicle.

In the case of a tag that has been produced but is yet to be sold to any vehicle, the portal shows “valid but yet to be assigned”. But if the number plate is invalid, the portal shows “invalid number plate”.

For convenience, the entire data was grouped into four categories according to vehicle type. They are: Keke Napep (tricycles), Okada (motorcycles), commercial buses and private cars. The following paragraphs reveal the results obtained from the portal.

A screenshot of the FRSC’s verification portal showing a number plate is “valid and assigned to the vehicle details below.”

On the one hand, Keke Napep, a dominant public transport mode on inner city roads for many low-income earners, formed 21% of the data from Lagos. In particular, there were 228 tricycle number plates. 109 had been validly registered. The rest, 98 and 21, had not been assigned to any vehicle or were invalid respectively. Yet, they all had been printed and affixed to vehicles.

On the other hand, Okada, motorcycles used for passenger transport services, are equally popular in the state. Out of the 17 registration numbers obtained, the portal showed that nine had been assigned to vehicles, six had not been assigned, and two were fake.

Of the 316 city bus number plates snapped, 103 were registered and 196 had not been assigned. 17 others were invalid.

A screenshot of the FRSC’s verification portal showing an “invalid number plate.”

With 507, private vehicles formed the bulk of the data collected from the traffic-congested city of Lagos. Out of this figure, 285 were validly registered, 151 were not and 71 were neither registered nor valid.

With Osun’s 218 number plates, 29 attached to passenger buses were validly registered, while 67, already attached to vehicles, had not been assigned, and one was invalid. For private vehicles, the portal indicated that 27 number plates were validly assigned, 47 were not and three were invalid. For tricycles and motorcycles, 11 were properly assigned, 20 were not and 13 were invalid.

A total of 242 number plate data was obtained from Oyo, the next most populous state after Lagos in the southwestern region. Out of 133 Keke Napep tags, 11 had been registered to vehicles, 83 were yet to be assigned and 39 were fake, per the portal.

EQ identified 67 city vehicle tags, among which 23 registrations were right, 41 were not and three were flagged invalid. The breakdown of the 19 private vehicles is as follows: 10 were identified to have validly assigned number plates, five were unassigned, and four were fake. EQ also found 25 tags on motorcycles, out of which six were recorded to have valid tags, 12 were not and five were fake.

There were more unassigned number plates in Ogun than validly assigned ones from the 210 samples found by EQ. In particular, 27 tricycles were identified, from which three number plates were registered to vehicles, 19 had no details and five were invalid.

The available data also showed that 18 passenger cars and buses had correct number plates registered to them and 45 were not registered to a vehicle. A total of 67 motorcycles were identified, and 12 tags were correspondingly registered to the same number of vehicles; 49 had not been assigned to any vehicle, and six were invalid.

EQ’s findings were based on the results obtained from the FRSC’s verification portal and the data of 1,738 vehicle number plates manually collected through a see-and-snap method.

Undoubtedly, the cost of number plate fraud goes beyond security threats. It significantly affects the revenue generation capacity of the government, but quantifying this loss could be difficult as there is no official data to that effect. Going by EQ’s findings, a combined 881 (private and commercial motor vehicle number plates) of the entire 1,738 number plates identified for this investigation may have been fraudulently procured. This translates to 50.7% of the entire data collected.

While the prices of number plates vary from state to state, the FRSC’s most recent rates issued in 2021 represent an average price across states. A number plate for both private and commercial vehicles is sold for N18,750. Therefore, if the money for the 881 number plates went unpaid to the right authorities, a N16,518,750 payment was not made.

As the verification platform only shows a vehicle make and colour, EQ could not ascertain when the legitimate number plates were acquired. Regardless of their registration status, many of these plates have been in use for years judging from their physical condition.

As automobile-related crimes persist, a vehicle with a fake number plate will be untraceable after the commission of a crime, making the job of security agencies more complicated to perform and widening the gap between a victim and justice dispensation.

There is almost a black market for everything in Nigeria. Just like there is a black market for petroleum products and the country’s legal tender, vehicle number plates could also be bought on the black market at a relatively cheaper rate. Although the FRSC says that there are no licensed number plate dealers, some vehicle owners purchase their number plates via proxies, which an official at the Lagos State’s Motor Vehicle Administration Agency (MVAA) referred to as “client representatives”.

State governments only sell vehicle tags through authorised departments, such as the MVAA and the internal revenue services in Osun, Ogun and Oyo states.

To obtain a vehicle plate in Lagos, for instance, the MVAA asks an applicant to present customer papers, a valid driver’s licence, an identity card, vehicle insurance documents, a residential bill, proof of vehicle ownership and tax identification number, among others. Submitting this personally identifiable information makes a vehicle traceable if involved in a criminal operation or wanted for a traffic violation. But on the black market driven by fraud, these requirements might not play any role in the transaction between an unscrupulous seller and, perhaps, an innocent buyer who chooses to go through a middleman to avoid bureaucratic delays.

In December 2023, Daily Trust reported that the Nigerian Ports Authority found about 413 fake vehicle tags in the Ijora area of Lagos. Truckers at the ports were said to be using these fraudulent tags to avoid scrutiny and gain access into the Apapa port.

Beyond the southwestern part of Nigeria, there are stories of number plate-associated crimes. Chukwudi Nbachukwu, a suspect arrested by the police, narrated in June how he had been engaging in interstate robberies for years. He said, “I actually have three to four number plates. When a victim memorises my vehicle number, I go to another location and change the plate number to another one.”

There is no data about the number of sham number plates in Nigeria, but Timothy Iwuagwu, the president of the Institute of Safety Professionals of Nigeria (ISPON) and a retired military officer with international peacekeeping experience, said it was significant.

Iwuagwu emphasised that the problem could be addressed with a strong verification portal.

“Public access to certain data about vehicles is necessary to ensure people’s safety in the country. So, the idea behind that website was fine, but corruption is killing it and it is not reliable. Added to this is that not many people know about the website, so the FRSC is not doing well to sanitise its processes. When a corrupt licensing official issues a number plate to a vehicle owner who is willing to pay their price, such number plates are not documented. It may not necessarily be fake, but the process of issuing was improper,” Iwuagwu told EQ.

“Because the process was not documented, traffic officers on the road might check the portal and see that a number plate was not registered, making the vehicle owner vulnerable to extortion. I know someone who properly got his number plate, yet it was identified as fake.”

“When it comes to road safety, a number plate is used as a vehicle’s identity and its owner. Sometimes, a road crash occurs, and everybody dies; a valid number plate will help in tracking the family of the vehicle owner. In crime management, a vehicle used to commit a crime can be traced with its number plate.”

Fake number plate producers usually pick a valid number plate and rearrange its alphanumeric codes to produce as many as they want. Security personnel also need to acquaint themselves with the sequence of writing number plates so that when they see a fake one, they can easily know.

A criminal who snatched a vehicle might not know where it was registered, but if there is a system a traffic controller or even a curious member of the public could just access on the spot, they would be able to ask questions about the vehicle’s ownership and other details.

If the answer doesn’t correspond with the fact, they could instantly arrest the criminal, the ISPON president explained.

ARE THEY ACTUALLY FAKE?

When reached for comments, Olusegun Ogungbimide, the FRSC spokesperson, asked EQ to forward its questions to him on WhatsApp, but his number was not registered to a WhatsApp profile. When he did not respond to a text requesting his WhatsApp-enabled line, EQ instead forwarded the questions to him as a text. He had not responded at press time.

At a meeting with the MVAA on November 13, the agency referred EQ to its website, named “Vehicle Licence Verification Portal”. Unlike the FRSC’s, the MVAA’s website only shows vehicle licence amount, vehicle licence validity and expiry date as well as hackney permit validity and expiry date, lacking details about which number plate is registered.

A screenshot of the website showing brief information about a vehicle.

“The Lagos-issued number plates you have are not necessarily fake because the FRSC’s portal said so,” said Rafiu Olawale Ojikutu, a director of administration and human resource at MVAA.

“We have our own portal and you can check our number plates there and we make sure number plates from our office are properly documented.”

The meeting was preceded by a freedom of information request delivered to the agency on November 6. After the meeting, Ojikutu promised to provide a written response to all the questions listed in the letter but he had not done so at press time.

EQ found that many of the number plates across the four states tagged “invalid” by the FRSC’s portal were valid when checked on the MVAA’s website, raising concerns that FRSC, being the federal traffic agency, is failing to keep the platform reliable, data-wise.

Although FRSC did not respond to inquiries, Bisi Kazeem, a former spokesperson, had said in 2016 that the agency was not involved in uploading data to the portal. Highlighting what each response on the verification stood for, Kazeem said any number plate not produced by the FRSC would show “invalid”.

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“The essence of the Information Verification Portal is to assist the owner of the vehicle and security operatives on the status of the number plates. The idea is that when the owner of the vehicle discovers that there are issues with the registration, he should use the status or information gathered to clarify with the licensing office that handled the registration and if through a third party, confront the handlers,” Kazeem said.

“In summary, the verification portal provides four options when verifying number plates depending on the stage of registration as follows:

“(a) Number not produced but tried to be registered by any applicant will result in ‘Invalid Number Plate’.

“(b) When a number is produced but not registered/data not uploaded, this is the message you, ‘Number produced but not Registered’.

“(c) When a number is produced and registered without a genuine Insurance policy that is verifiable by NIIDB, the message you get is what the complainant got as ‘Number plate has been assigned to Lexus Jeep. However, vehicle registration is yet to be completed’.

“(d) When a registration is fully completed with a genuine Insurance Policy resulting in the printing of Proof of Ownership, the message will be: “Number plate has been produced by FRSC and assigned to TOYOTA HIGHLANDER on 6/11/2013′.”

Eight years after Kazeem’s explanation, the portal remains an unreliable source of verifying licence plates in the country.

This story was produced with support from the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism (WSCIJ) under the Collaborative Media Engagement for Development Inclusivity and Accountability Project (CMEDIA) funded by the MacArthur Foundation.
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