RECKLESS DRIVING AND SAFETY PROCEDURES ON NIGERIAN ROADS

RECKLESS DRIVING AND SAFETY PROCEDURES ON NIGERIAN ROADS

BY:

MUDASSIR ALIYU YUNUSA

NTA ZARIA

mudassiray@gmail.com

  It is obvious that Nigerian roads (especially highways) became the greatest death zones that are persistently claiming lives of the citizens and render many handicapped, insane, disables and brings so many vehicle/property damages as well as financial implications. All this happened as a result of frequent involvement in minor and major auto accidents that occurs almost every day on our roads. So many factors contributed to the risk of collisions/accidents, and this includes vehicle design and capability, speed of operation, nature of the road (degradation, potholes and road design), environmental influence, weather condition, driver’s behavior, skill and impairment (like over speeding, dangerous overtaking, reckless driving etc).

The situation became worrisome and continuously worsen with so many reports of accidents on daily basis, and this is largely occurs as a result of failure of government and stakeholders in performing their primary responsibilities on road traffic and to take proper action on the procedures on how to use Nigerian road judiciously by motorists and pedestrian. For instance Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) are charged with statutory responsibilities on road safety, administration and management including making our ways safer for users, eliminating or minimizing the rate of accident, educating road users toward exhibiting discipline on highways, regulating speed, overload, clearing roads through proper evacuation of any object including vehicles that involved in accidents or any breakdown on the road and the road side, assisting the victims of accident, reducing any unpleasant trend on road traffic that can cause casualties and fatal accidents, as well as enforcing other sundry and miscellaneous traffic rules and regulations with the aims of sanitizing roads for the betterment of the general public. But  what amazing me most is how those vested with the authority to bring sanity on our roads are discharging their routine duties by applying some questionable and unethical character especially the officials of FRSC  whose in most cases deviate and abandon their important and primary duties/ functions like thorough inspection of vehicles, imposing and regulating speed limit, banning overload, dangerous overtaking, disengaging old vehicles (off-the-road), educating and enlighten the general public particularly road workers and pedestrians on how to abide by the rules and regulations of the road, but rather concentrate on minor rules like fasten seat belt, vehicle particulars, plate numbers etc which does not in any way prevent the occurrence of physical accident (even though it is important and is part of their routine work but with regard to safety procedure it is not as important as the  aforementioned duties).

Officials of FRSC mostly intercepts and intimidates an average private vehicle owners on the highways allowing commercial and flashy private vehicles to ply freely on the roads despite all the reckless driving and violation of traffic orders. You can see  typically a commercial car drivers with 3 passengers in the front seat,  2 in 1 and the other passenger by the left hand of the driver, What an insensitive character? But allowed to go unintercepted, while somebody that is driving gently obeying the traffic rules diligently yet blocked and intimidated by the so called road Marshalls. Therefore, if I may ask what brought all these bias and discrimination between the road users? Is there any arrangement made between commercial motorists and FRSC Officials? My assumption on the above is either the commercial motorists are giving  return as a tip/bribe to complement the road Marshalls or the  stakeholders on road traffic are not sincere in their duties. My last question is,  Why some dangerous actions exhibited by some road users are not giving much priorities?

However, with the actions displayed by some officers of FRSC, I consider it as a breach of trust and also against the ethic of work. FRSC as the apex body with full authority to implement traffic rules and regulations and to sanction the violaters of laws on Nigerian roads,  it is expected to treat people equally in the course of discharging their duty, however anybody who  break the law should be sanctioned accordingly without any intimidation, unfortunately most of the time their actions goes parallel to the provisions of road traffic order. You can bear me witness and vote a support for me particularly if you are travelling on inter-state highways.

      Therefore, I will like to call the attention of government and stakeholders to be firm and resolute with regards to the rules and regulations our roads, this will be the right way of controlling the frequent occurrence of accident which is claiming many lives of people. Officials of Road Safety Corps should apply tactical approaches in discharging their responsibilities, they should apply the principles of sincerity, integrity and impartiality, and also shun against any kind of bribe in kind or in cash that might discourage them from exercising their power to whosoever breaks the roads traffic rules and regulations.

Finally, general public alike particularly commercial car drivers’ should conduct themselves in an excellent way especially when it comes to the use of the roads, they should drive safely, avoid overloading, dangerous overtaking and abide by the signs and signals of the road, at the same time they should know that God the master of judgments will not leave them unpunished if any accident occurs as a result of their recklessness and incautious driving.

MUDASSIR write from NTA Zaria.