Vice President Kashim Shettima has ordered a holistic overhaul of Nigeria’s road safety measures.
He gave the directive during a meeting with the leadership of the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) led by its Corps Marshal, Shehu Mohammed, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, on Friday.
The directive is aimed at addressing the country’s road safety challenges and significantly reducing accidents across the nation, his spokesman Stanley Nkwocha said in a statement.
The Vice President stressed the urgent need to address the increasing road crashes on the highways, highlighting the importance of leveraging technology and enforcing discipline to improve road safety.
“We need a comprehensive solution for our road safety challenges. The whole ecosystem is not as it should be,” Shettima stated, emphasizing the need for “deliberate efforts toward addressing our road challenges,” in line with international best practices in countries like Dubai and the UK.
“In places like Dubai and the UK, they have a mechanism of checking road traffic violators, capture their car number plates, and are charged directly from their bank account. This way, people are encouraged to obey the law. We need to be a disciplined nation,” he said.
“The FRSC’s job is intertwined with that of the Nigerian Police as it is part of the security architecture of the nation.”
Drawing parallels to successful security initiatives he had observed in Enugu state, he said “I was in Enugu yesterday and the state government is doing so well. The governor has put in place a security architecture where the whole town and the whole state are under surveillance including the forest areas.”
Vice President Shettima will, in the coming days, inaugurate the National Road Safety Advisory Council saddled with the responsibility of reducing traffic accidents by half before 2030.
