“Nigeria is currently 191st out of 192 countries of the world’s ‘unsafe’ roads.
Like everything else in our national underdevelopment, our roads have been rated among the most deplorable in the world. According to Corps Marshal and Chief Executive of the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC), Osita Chidoka, at the 2011 Nigerian Institute of Safety Professionals’ Conference in Warri, “Nigeria is currently 191st out of 192 countries of the world’s ‘unsafe’ roads”.
In the estimate of the World Health Organisation (WHO), over 1.3 million people are killed in road accidents and 50 million suffer various injuries annually while over 80 percent of reported cases occur in developing countries, with African countries recording the highest number of deaths. Nigeria, as usual, takes its worrisome ‘pride’ of place among the countries with the highest number of road accidents. Unacceptable is the fact that all available data of auto crashes indicate that, at least, 162 persons out of 100,000 Nigerians are regular victims. This calls for serious concern by the federal and state governments.
Road accidents are inevitable but they can be reduced to the barest minimum. The alarming rate of road accidents in Nigeria needs to be curtailed. The pity of it all is that, to ordinary Nigerians and members of the international community, deaths on Nigerian roads are as common as the fresh air that we breathe. What is not common knowledge is that Nigeria occupies the top position among the most dangerous countries in the world, with respect to highway calamities – 191 out of 192 or second to the last, which is almost at the very top of the list of dangerous countries in this regard. Unfortunately, this negative and hopeless ranking is a common phenomenon in all spheres of our lives.
Trillions of Naira had been spent on Nigerian roads since 1999 with little or no result. The rich, especially government functionaries, hardly use these roads as they fly most of the time to and from their destinations. Paradoxically, road accidents are more common and more ghastly even on good roads, than on the bad ones, owing to reckless driving, excessive speeding and lack of understanding of how to use the roads, mostly by illiterate and semi-illiterate drivers.
Moreover, more than half of those driving on Nigerian roads do not have genuine driver’s licences, which means they were not subjected to rigorous driving tests. The role of the police has compounded the matter. Policemen who are not required to perform the duty of traffic officers abound on our roads, often collecting bribes from vehicle owners and sometimes resulting in accidents at the check-points. When that happens, the policemen disappear into the bush.
Vehicles that are not roadworthy even carry overloaded goods and passengers. Apart from the problem created on our roads by greedy and undisciplined policemen, there is the attitude of drivers which probably accounts for more than half of accidents on good and bad roads. Impatience and greed to make quick money by commercial drivers account for most of them. And when you add the danger created by articulated vehicles, most of them unfit for the road; the careless and reckless driving and indiscriminate parking by their often drunk drivers and stationary vehicles, the high incidence of ghastly accidents on our roads becomes a foregone conclusion.
That we cannot manage our roads, prevent or minimise accidents is perfectly consistent with our numerous failures as a nation. That is why some people think that Nigeria could better be described as a failed state, and that precisely is what our ranking as 191st out 192 countries having the world’s most unsafe roads seems to have proven beyond reasonable doubt.
BUT for its tardiness, another developmenst of constitutional import may have passed unnoticed by Nigerians. It is, however, just as well that the multi-purpose Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) has run into stormy waters in its current plans to replace both the national driver’s licence and number plates for new ones.
If Nigerians had expected the FRSC to have done its homework after the fanfare of its highly publicised launch of the two schemes by President Goodluck Jonathan in Abuja on September 2, they were tragically mistaken: the FRSC leopard seems unlikely to change its spots. If anything, the corruption and racketeering which tainted the “ancien regime” seems to have mutated. Witness the current blame game – between the motorists and licensing authorities – over who is responsible for the nationwide scarcity of number plates.
But – the matter is whether the FRSC isn’t seeking – yet again, to bite more than it can chew by taking up the two matters which belong to states licensing authorities and which the latter appear better equipped to do. The indications seven weeks after the launch of their latest brainwaves are that the FRSC is not ready. Across the federation, the story is the same: old number plates have disappeared; yet the new ones are not available – leaving a fertile environment for racketeering.
Clearly, the time to rethink the assumption of the FRSC monopoly over the production and issuance of both the national driver’s licence and number plates is now. We say this because the issues are not only constitutional but also procedural.
To start with, the very idea of a national monopoly in charge of number plates has become an absurdity. Whatever conditions that made “unification” necessary in the past cannot be said to exist now. On one hand, it is ridiculous, if not entirely laughable, that the FRSC would seek to maintain the patently dysfunctional system by taking shelter behind the finger of “security” and “standardisation”. On the other, constitutional issues compel a rethink.
First of course is the question of who has the authority to issue driver’s licence and number plates. The states, without question, have the authority to issue both. They administer the tests on the licensees; they also process and take custody of the paperwork for vehicle registration. FRSC’s role in the chain is procurement; no more, no less!
To the extent that our “centralised federalism” has become an anathema, a cog in the wheel of national aspirations and development, we cannot be seen to endorse the uncurbed powers and privileges of another behemoth which insists on sapping Nigerians with its overarching powers without delivering commensurate value. It is in this light that we reject the notion that only the FRSC can produce fool-proof, secured driver’s licence and number plates.
That is not to say that we do not agree with the need to upgrade the driver’s licence and the number plate system. While they are long overdue, the blame for the muddling of both deservedly goes to the FRSC.
Our prescription of a new driver’s licensing system is however one in which states assume control. We do not agree with the FRSC that states cannot maintain a database of drivers which can be integrated with those of the police, the FRSC and other security agencies.
The FRSC is neither a procurement agency nor the Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Plc. We see nothing wrong with FRSC working with states to agree on a national sample, while leaving states with the responsibility of procurement. That is what makes sense and that is what obtains elsewhere.
Like everything else in our national underdevelopment, our roads have been rated among the most deplorable in the world. According to Corps Marshal and Chief Executive of the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC), Osita Chidoka, at the 2011 Nigerian Institute of Safety Professionals’ Conference in Warri, “Nigeria is currently 191st out of 192 countries of the world’s ‘unsafe’ roads”.
In the estimate of the World Health Organisation (WHO), over 1.3 million people are killed in road accidents and 50 million suffer various injuries annually while over 80 percent of reported cases occur in developing countries, with African countries recording the highest number of deaths. Nigeria, as usual, takes its worrisome ‘pride’ of place among the countries with the highest number of road accidents. Unacceptable is the fact that all available data of auto crashes indicate that, at least, 162 persons out of 100,000 Nigerians are regular victims. This calls for serious concern by the federal and state governments.
Road accidents are inevitable but they can be reduced to the barest minimum. The alarming rate of road accidents in Nigeria needs to be curtailed. The pity of it all is that, to ordinary Nigerians and members of the international community, deaths on Nigerian roads are as common as the fresh air that we breathe. What is not common knowledge is that Nigeria occupies the top position among the most dangerous countries in the world, with respect to highway calamities – 191 out of 192 or second to the last, which is almost at the very top of the list of dangerous countries in this regard. Unfortunately, this negative and hopeless ranking is a common phenomenon in all spheres of our lives.
Trillions of Naira had been spent on Nigerian roads since 1999 with little or no result. The rich, especially government functionaries, hardly use these roads as they fly most of the time to and from their destinations. Paradoxically, road accidents are more common and more ghastly even on good roads, than on the bad ones, owing to reckless driving, excessive speeding and lack of understanding of how to use the roads, mostly by illiterate and semi-illiterate drivers.
Moreover, more than half of those driving on Nigerian roads do not have genuine driver’s licences, which means they were not subjected to rigorous driving tests. The role of the police has compounded the matter. Policemen who are not required to perform the duty of traffic officers abound on our roads, often collecting bribes from vehicle owners and sometimes resulting in accidents at the check-points. When that happens, the policemen disappear into the bush.
Vehicles that are not roadworthy even carry overloaded goods and passengers. Apart from the problem created on our roads by greedy and undisciplined policemen, there is the attitude of drivers which probably accounts for more than half of accidents on good and bad roads. Impatience and greed to make quick money by commercial drivers account for most of them. And when you add the danger created by articulated vehicles, most of them unfit for the road; the careless and reckless driving and indiscriminate parking by their often drunk drivers and stationary vehicles, the high incidence of ghastly accidents on our roads becomes a foregone conclusion.
That we cannot manage our roads, prevent or minimise accidents is perfectly consistent with our numerous failures as a nation. That is why some people think that Nigeria could better be described as a failed state, and that precisely is what our ranking as 191st out 192 countries having the world’s most unsafe roads seems to have proven beyond reasonable doubt.
BUT for its tardiness, another developmenst of constitutional import may have passed unnoticed by Nigerians. It is, however, just as well that the multi-purpose Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) has run into stormy waters in its current plans to replace both the national driver’s licence and number plates for new ones.
If Nigerians had expected the FRSC to have done its homework after the fanfare of its highly publicised launch of the two schemes by President Goodluck Jonathan in Abuja on September 2, they were tragically mistaken: the FRSC leopard seems unlikely to change its spots. If anything, the corruption and racketeering which tainted the “ancien regime” seems to have mutated. Witness the current blame game – between the motorists and licensing authorities – over who is responsible for the nationwide scarcity of number plates.
But – the matter is whether the FRSC isn’t seeking – yet again, to bite more than it can chew by taking up the two matters which belong to states licensing authorities and which the latter appear better equipped to do. The indications seven weeks after the launch of their latest brainwaves are that the FRSC is not ready. Across the federation, the story is the same: old number plates have disappeared; yet the new ones are not available – leaving a fertile environment for racketeering.
Clearly, the time to rethink the assumption of the FRSC monopoly over the production and issuance of both the national driver’s licence and number plates is now. We say this because the issues are not only constitutional but also procedural.
To start with, the very idea of a national monopoly in charge of number plates has become an absurdity. Whatever conditions that made “unification” necessary in the past cannot be said to exist now. On one hand, it is ridiculous, if not entirely laughable, that the FRSC would seek to maintain the patently dysfunctional system by taking shelter behind the finger of “security” and “standardisation”. On the other, constitutional issues compel a rethink.
First of course is the question of who has the authority to issue driver’s licence and number plates. The states, without question, have the authority to issue both. They administer the tests on the licensees; they also process and take custody of the paperwork for vehicle registration. FRSC’s role in the chain is procurement; no more, no less!
To the extent that our “centralised federalism” has become an anathema, a cog in the wheel of national aspirations and development, we cannot be seen to endorse the uncurbed powers and privileges of another behemoth which insists on sapping Nigerians with its overarching powers without delivering commensurate value. It is in this light that we reject the notion that only the FRSC can produce fool-proof, secured driver’s licence and number plates.
That is not to say that we do not agree with the need to upgrade the driver’s licence and the number plate system. While they are long overdue, the blame for the muddling of both deservedly goes to the FRSC.
Our prescription of a new driver’s licensing system is however one in which states assume control. We do not agree with the FRSC that states cannot maintain a database of drivers which can be integrated with those of the police, the FRSC and other security agencies.
The FRSC is neither a procurement agency nor the Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Plc. We see nothing wrong with FRSC working with states to agree on a national sample, while leaving states with the responsibility of procurement. That is what makes sense and that is what obtains elsewhere.
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