Touts, Roadblocks and Police Shakedowns: Buying a Car in Apapa Is a Battle Against Organized Street Extortion

 

Stepping into the Apapa area of Lagos to buy a used car is less of a transactional activity and more of a calculated gamble. For many first-time buyers, the ordeal begins not at the seller’s lot but with a stranger loitering near the port gate. This stranger, often posing as a helpful middleman, will insist on guiding you to a legitimate seller. Refusing this unsolicited assistance could mean being blocked, harassed, or subtly threatened.

Buyers who manage to locate the actual car owner, negotiate, and pay for their vehicle might believe the worst is behind them. Unfortunately, that’s far from the truth. Once the money changes hands, a fresh ordeal begins. Touts, often operating under ambiguous titles and claiming unofficial authority, step in with demands.

Before moving the car, you’re told to pay a “park removal fee.” There’s no documented explanation for this fee, no receipt, and certainly no way around it. Asking questions only makes things worse. The fee, often arbitrary, is justified with vague claims about local “transport union rules” or “area boys’ dues.”

As the buyer attempts to drive out of the port zone, a crowd gathers. Individuals who were simply standing nearby during the negotiation suddenly demand compensation for their “presence.” Their claim? That their being there somehow assisted in the transaction, and thus, they deserve a cut. Refusing to “settle” them often leads to intimidation, shouting, or physical obstruction.

Just outside the port, the Nigerian police sometimes set up impromptu checkpoints. Freshly purchased vehicle or not, documents or not, buyers are flagged down. Officers might suggest that moving a car without “clearing” with them is illegal. Even with the original paperwork, vehicle registration, and proof of sale, the pressure to “cooperate” financially remains high.

The journey doesn’t ease up on the expressway either. Scattered across major exit routes are groups of self-styled revenue collectors. Wearing laminated tags and carrying crude roadblocks, they flag down vehicles without government authority. They claim to represent unknown unions or port agencies, flashing generic stickers and unverified permits.

These individuals typically demand ₦5,000 or more before allowing cars to pass. Attempting to negotiate a lower amount can trigger open threats: slashed tires, damaged mirrors, or being surrounded by an angry mob. The fear of escalating the situation forces many buyers into paying up.

What’s striking is the complete lack of visible enforcement. These extortionists operate in broad daylight, often beside law enforcement officers who look the other way. The whole process resembles a well-oiled system, with each group knowing its role in the harassment pipeline.

Apapa, once envisioned as the gateway to West Africa’s trade economy, has become a dense hub of informal extortion. The chaos has nothing to do with economic hardship or youth unemployment alone; it’s rooted in a deep culture of unaccountability. The city’s administrative silence only deepens the rot.

Lagos, despite being Nigeria’s commercial heartbeat, is now tangled in a network of pseudo-authorities that feed off intimidation. It isn’t a failure of intelligence or innovation. Tech hubs flourish nearby. Young minds build apps, launch startups, and dream global. The real breakdown lies in governance and enforcement.

Many residents have normalized the dysfunction, dismissing it as “street hustle” or “area levels.” But this is not harmless. It erodes trust in institutions, discourages investment, and sends a message that illegality can thrive as long as it wears the right face and brandishes the right lanyard.

Buying a car, a basic commercial transaction in any other city, becomes a gauntlet of bribes, threats, and extortion in Lagos. Until leadership at both state and local levels confronts this institutionalized lawlessness, the dream of a global mega city will remain stuck in traffic, just like its buyers in Apapa.

*originally written by Mayowa