By Clement Udegbe
THE first deliberate policy on road safety was with the
creation of the National Road Safety Commission NRSC, by the then military
government, in 1974, but they were scrapped. In 1977, the Military
Administration in Oyo State, established the Oyo State Road Safety Corps which
made modest local improvements in road safety and road discipline in the state,
but it was disbanded in 1983.
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The subsequent classification of Nigeria as one of the most
road traffic accident prone countries worldwide, second to Ethiopia, led to
establishment of the Federal Road Safety Commission, FRSC, in 1988, as the lead
agency in Nigeria on road safety administration and management. It’s statutory
functions included; Making the highways safe for motorists and other road users
as well as checking road worthiness of vehicles, recommending works and
infrastructures to eliminate or minimise accidents on the highways and
educating motorists and members of the public on the importance of road
discipline on the highways. Nigeria had well built, good, and smooth roads, and
the major challenge was control and regulation of speed.
The Corps had vehicles with radar equipment to detect vehicle
speeds, but as pot holes and craters took over the roads, especially in the
south of Nigeria, due to years of neglect by subsequent governments, speed
control became very unnecessary, and the FRSC started inventing ways to remain
relevant. They first switched into Vehicle Drivers License issuance, without
any known means of ascertaining that the drivers they license can drive safely.
The result today is the preponderance of dangerous commercial and private
drivers on Nigerian roads.
The Drivers license which should also act as a good means of
identity, has no links with the national identity card data base. You own one
if you can pay. The official price tag of the license is about N7,000 but it
costs about N15,000 to get one in Lagos and most FRSC centres. While in other
saner climes, the driver’s license is valid for life of the owner, it is a
common piece of plastic card and expires every five years in Nigeria, no thanks
to FRSC. About two years ago, they veered into the production and issuance of
the Vehicle number plates, with a greater confusion. It is not clear if the
number plate expires with the destruction of a vehicle or linked with the owner
who can transfer it to another, if a vehicle is destroyed for any reasons. Yet,
it is a very expensive item to procure, and you may have to wait for long to
get one.
The official price to get one is about N20,000, but it costs
not less than N40,000 to get one today. The often scarcity of vehicle number
plates, has led to increase in fake number plates, complicating crime
prevention and fighting for the Police Force. Their latest scheme is the Speed
Limiter which they are now enforcing on commercial vehicles, and will soon
extend to private vehicles. Like the driver’s license and vehicle number
plates, this one will create another avenue to make money from Nigerians. How
do they control speed on very bad roads?
Most Roads in the South East are in pitiable conditions, yet
you find FRSC near huge pot holes or police check points, harassing drivers,
asking from brake and indicator lights, head lamps, fire extinguisher to
display of waste baskets, etc. They carry a list of checks a driver can never
satisfy if the officer decides as they often do, to be mean. They are
specialised in picking soft targets mostly new vehicles owners, to do their
routine checks, while allowing commercial vehicles with expired tyres, no
driving mirrors, etc. FRSC has lost direction from their original purpose, and
depend largely on money making schemes to become relevant. Primary duties of
the FRSC are being carried out by some other agencies in states. For example,
they are not involved in road maintenance to keep the roads safer, the Federal
Road Maintenance Agency FERMA is doing just that.
The Police still checks vehicle particulars, provides
security for motorists, and fight crime on roads. Most State governments have
set up traffic management agencies like LASTMA in Lagos, which are better
equipped, with the Vehicle Inspectorate agency VIO, which has the
responsibility of inspecting vehicles to ascertain their road worthiness. These
have undermined the effectiveness and relevance of FRSC in the city; The FRSC
is so poorly equipped that they can hardly help accident victims on the high
ways. They have no Doctors, Nurses or trained paramedics, and it is still the
Police that motorists look up to, on most high ways. The lack of equipment to
rescue the members of the public at an accident scene will cause shock and
panic to anyone who has seen a documentary on paramedics from saner climes.
Their presence at accident sites with VIOs, National
Emergency Management Agency, NEMA and Police produce confusion of who is
in-charge as we all saw, when the plane carrying the body of late Chief Agagun
of Ondo State, crash landed a few years ago. Data from FRSC, VIOs, NEMA and the
Police is not shared among them easily. This can be eliminated by the merging
of some of these agencies with the Police especially as it affects road traffic
matters. Crime prevention and fighting will be easier if these agencies share
data and information freely without unnecessary rivalry, and systemic
bottlenecks.
When these departments work under the police department, it
will give room for more centralised documentation and promote efficiency within
the organisation. The departments will see themselves as colleagues and not
rivals and reduce the over head cost of running duplicated agencies that
perform the same function. With the increasing and spreading threat of
terrorism, the challenge for security agencies will be easier to overcome, if
they have a general centralised data base, which can check both individuals and
their vehicles within minutes, in one fell swoop. The question is whether the
FRSC in the current Nigerian system needs a complete overhauling, scrapping or
merging with some other agencies of the government?
*Udegbe is a commentator on public issues
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