Corps Marshal, Federal Road Safety Corps, FRSC, Shehu Mohammed, has stated that one of the major factors of road crashes in Nigeria is the human factor.
In an interview on Arise News on Wednesday, he noted that the driving culture of our drivers is a huge factor, adding that most drivers lack the required and adequate training to drive in a large population like Nigeria.
“There are so many factors [to road crashes]. One of the major factors is the human aspect of it. That is the human factor.
“The driving culture of our drivers. They lack the training, the required and adequate training to drive in an environment like Nigeria, where we have a larger population, where there is a little bit of illiteracy, a little bit of poverty, and therefore that really contributes to the growing fatality and injuries that is going on on our roads,” he said.
Asked what exactly the FRSC is doing to face these challenges squarely, especially when it comes to compliance and enforcement, he added:
“Of course, we have been doing our best, pushing for enforcement, pushing for training and retaining of our personnel to be able to sensitize, you know, do public education, because if we are able to get the public education right, telling people what to do, how to obey traffic rules and regulation, how to use the road properly, how to do safe driving, how to imbibe safe driving culture, I think we can get it right right now.
“The government is doing well in terms of funding, in terms of infrastructure, in terms of even using technology. FRSC is using more technology now to be able to drive our processes and also to do the enforcement. What we require more is sensitization. The main issue now is the mixed-loading.
“Mixed-loading is where people, passengers use trucks and animals and goods to travel from one location to the other. Whenever there is a crash, we have several fatalities.
“So the main issue now is for us to be able to continue to educate people, to educate the citizens on the proper use of these roads, and then obeying the traffic rules and regulation.”
