The head of the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), Corp Marshal Shehu Mohammed, has stated that his goal is to cut traffic crashes by 50% in accordance with the UN road safety agenda, which is in line with the National Road Safety strategy 2021–2030.
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This information is available according to the National Association of Online Security News Publishers, or NAOSNP. At a press conference held at the FRSC Zone RS2 Public Enlightenment Hall, Ojodu, Lagos, he disclosed this. Shehu Mohammed confirmed to reporters that he believes everyone must take responsibility for advancing road safety.
Both the World Bank and the World Health Organisation rate traffic accidents as the leading cause of death worldwide. In Africa, the death rate per 100,000 inhabitants is approximately 18.5%. For this reason, the United Nations’ 2021–2030 plan of action calls for a 50% reduction in traffic accidents nationwide. By doing this, the FRSC is able to coordinate and plan with the National Road Safety Strategy, which is also being implemented throughout the same time frame, 2021–2030.
The objective is for all of us to take the necessary steps to guarantee that, even in the event of a traffic accident, there would be no fatalities or injuries; this is what we define as a safe system. Because human beings are fallible and prone to making mistakes, this safe system involves interactions between people, vehicles, and the road environment.
Because of this, it has established pillars to mitigate the risk of death and serious injury resulting from driving errors. The ultimate goal is to achieve zero death and zero serious injury. Corp Marshal Shehu Mohammed stated, “The first pillar is road safety management, which is legal and institutional framework that set up FRSC as leading traffic management in Nigeria,” citing the pillars of his vision for road safety.
“The government and all those involved in road construction should be able to key in to ensure that those roads are being built in a way that will reduce road traffic crashes and attempted fatalities,” the statement reads. “The second pillar is safer roads, safer society.” “The third pillar is the vehicle, and as everyone knows, in addition to airbags and seatbelts, modern cars also have automatic coalition systems and automatic break systems that cause the car to automatically stop when it approaches an object.
All of these features are designed to protect the occupants of the car so that even in the event of a crash, there won’t be fatalities or serious injuries.” We are here because safer road users are the next step. All you do is spread awareness, educate the public, advocate for change, and work together to teach the general population—who drives—how to use the roads safely.
“The final one is post-crash care, which states that the victim should be able to be transported to the closest hospital or clinic as soon as possible, even if there are injuries.” Mohammed made a suggestion about his actions since joining the team, saying, “I looked at our operation and the enforcement activities, everything, and I said let’s rejig and reposition our FRSC operation.”
We established a joint task force to ensure that we apprehend those trucks and trailers, bring those passengers down, and allow them to use passenger buses for travel after realising that articulated trucks and passengers, particularly those travelling from the North and south, are the cause of our crashes. Since most of these crashes are fatal, we are involving all relevant parties to ensure that these actions are not taken in order to protect our citizens’ lives and property.
We also stepped up our crash investigations. When crashes happen that result in one, four, or five fatalities, we launch crash investigations to determine the reason, assist the pertinent parties, and gather evidence. We also ask about the squad patrol, in which multiple teams go on patrol. Since each team consists of four or five people, combining multiple teams results in the formation of a squad, which gives us a full team capable of enforcing our enforcement techniques.
Technology is also being introduced by the FRSC. “The second initiative we started as soon as I joined the company was the federal administration’s transformation agenda. It is technology-driven, and we implemented an electronic document management system that positively impacts our administrative processes by reducing paper work.
The goal is to increase productivity overall by improving efficiency and effectiveness while also lowering the cost of our administrative courses.” We also use technology in our operations; for example, we have automated systems, use body cameras, and record all of our enforcement actions. We have a command centre at our headquarters, but we also have an FRSC app that we are launching in the next two weeks.
This app is a one-stop shop that will combine all of our products and processes into one app to make doing business easier. The best part about this app is that it will alert you as a passenger when there are black spots while you are driving. Additionally, it will alert you when the driver exceeds the limit.
To further transform FRSC into a digital agency, we are also working with communication agencies to alert drivers to crashes ahead, advising them to proceed with caution since there is a crash scene in front of them. Corps Marshal of the FRSC Shehu Mohammed stated of his officers: “We want to train and retrain our staff.” Our goal is to keep our three institutions open all year round.
Additionally, we cannot achieve the expected level of operation success without the training of our team, thus one of my candidature visions is to retain and train our workforce to ensure their continued effectiveness. The second area of focus is strategic partnership and collaboration.
The FRSC is most proud of its partnerships with organisations like the United Nations, World Bank, and World Health Organisation. We have been working with these organisations to support us during enforcement and enlightenment. In order to be able to create a better society, we want to keep doing that in order to receive additional financing from these organisations.
