By Oki Samson
CITIZENS COMPASS –The Corp Marshal of the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), Shehu Mohammed, has vowed to adopt the use of technology to reduce road crashes by 50%.
He promised to to align with the United Nations agenda on road safety and the National Road Safety strategy 2021-2030, the National Association of Online Security News Publishers (NAOSNP), can report.
He disclosed this on Thursday, at a media briefing which was held at the FRSC Zone RS2 Public Enlightenment Hall, Ojodu in Lagos.
Fielding questions from newsmen, he affirmed that his road safety agenda is a shared responsibility. ‘The World Bank and the World Health Organization categorize road traffic crashes as the cause of death ranking globally. In Africa we have about 18.5% death per 100,000 people. That is why the United Nations thinking of action 2021-2030 make it that nation should reduce road traffic crashes by 50% and by so doing we are able as FRSC to also key in and strategize with National Road Safety strategy which is also going within the same period, 2021 to 2030.’
‘The idea is for all of us to take appropriate action to ensure that even if road crashes occur, there should be zero death and zero fatal injury and that’s what we categorize as a safe system. This safe system is an interaction between people, vehicle and the road environment because we all believe that human being are vulnerable and prone to make mistakes, but once they make that mistake while driving it shouldn’t result to death, or serious injury, and because of that the brought out pillars to mitigate, so that we can achieve that zero death and zero serious injury.’
Citing the pillars of his vision for road safety, Corp Marshal Shehu Mohammed said: ‘The first pillar is road safety management, which is the legal and institutional framework that set up FRSC as leading traffic management in Nigeria.’
‘Second pillar is safer road, safer society therefore all those involved in road construction, the government should be able to key in to see that those road are being built in such a way that it will reduce road traffic crashes and attempted fatalities.’
‘The third pillar is vehicle and we are all aware that vehicles now apart from the seatbelts, the airbag, we now have automatic brake system, automatic coalition system whereby if a vehicle is approaching an object it will automatically stop, all this are been done to safeguard the occupant of the vehicle so that even if there are crashes, it won’t result to death or serious injury.’
‘Then we come to safer road users, so that is why we are here. all you do is public enlightenment, public education, advocacy, collaboration, just to enlighten the motoring public, different pubic on how to use the road and to be safe.’
‘The last one is the post crash care whereby even if the crash occurs and there are injury the victim should be able to be taken to the nearest hospital or clinic within respond time.’
On actions since coming on board, Mohammed hinted: ‘I looked at our operation and the enforcement activities, everything and I said let’s rejig and reposition our FRSC operation. We realized that what is giving us crashes is this articulated trucks and passengers especially coming from the North and down to the South because all the crashes that occur is usually fatal, so we instituted a joint task force to make sure that we apprehend those trucks and trailers and bring those passengers down and let them use passengers buses to travel and that is why we are engaging all stakeholders to make sure that those things are not being done so as to save the lives and properties of our citizens.’
“We also intensified the crash investigation, when crashes occur that involve 1 to 5 deaths, we institute crash investigation so that we’ll know the cause and help the relevant stakeholders, take records. We also inquire about the squad patrol whereby more than one team go on patrol, each team comprises four or five persons, so if you combine more than a team it becomes a squad so that we have a full team that can enforce our strategies.’
The FRSC boss said the Corps is also introducing technology. ‘The second one we do when I came in is the transformation agenda of the federal administrations, technology driven, we instituted our administrative positively, in electronic document management system, whereby we reduce the paperwork, the idea is to increase efficiency, effectiveness for overall productivity and to also reduce cost of our administrative courses. In our operation tion we also introduce technology, automated processes we have being we are using body camera, we record all our enforcement activities.’
‘While we have a command control in our headquarter and recently in the next Two weeks, we are introducing an FRSC App, a one stop shop whereby all our processes and products will be in one app for ease of doing business. The beauty of this app that we are introducing is that, as a passenger, if I have this app and you’re driving, it will highlight where there are dark spots. It will also highlight when the driver is going beyond limit. We are also collaborating with the communication agencies so that they will be giving alerts to motorists if there are crashes ahead. These are what we are doing to transform FRSC into a digital agency.’
On his officers, Corps Marshal of FRSC, Shehu Mohammed said: ‘We want to train and retrain our staff. We have Three institutions which we want to make them active throughout the year plus without training of our staff we can not get desired effectiveness of the operation that we are expected, so training is one of my candidate vision, training and retaining of our staff to make them work effectively. The next is strategic partnership and collaboration, we have being collaborating with agencies to support us during enforcement, and enlightenment, FRSC is most honored for partnership with agencies like United Nations, World Bank, World Health Organization. We want to continue with that so there will be more funding from such agencies to be able to build a better society’
