My drivers' license expired in July and immediately the dread of having to go and face the touts at the Licensing office hit me. After a few days, I decided to at least take the first step to google the nearest licensing office to my location. Good old google took me to a website that indicated I could renew my license on-line. With a lot of skepticism, I decided to follow through and after inputting the number of the expired license my captured details showed up. What a surprise! this motivated me to complete the form and voila I got to the page asking for payment. I paid on-line as well and the process was completed. I printed out the form and was ecstatic that I now had a document to cover me even if the real license doesn't get issued for months. Further to my surprise, I got a text from the licensing office of Iru/VI LG signed by Mrs. Adepoju that I could come to pick up my Permanent Drivers' license as it had been processed. All that was required was the print out of the payment. This was looking too good to be true.

So yesterday I drove down to the office on Muri Okunola Street to pick up the License and the drama began. I was told that after printing out the payment acknowledgment, I should have come over to the licensing office for it to be authenticated otherwise it is invalid. I am then supposed to go through an eye/vision test, meet with the VIOs and some sundry other tests as well as make another payment of N2000. You can bet that the N2k extra is unreceipted and goes to someone's pocket. The expectation was that I would cut a deal to circumvent all that extras and someone would earn a tidy sum. I just asked for my document back and left the place.

So, after all the efforts by Government to sanitize systems our touts will never let go.