- Accidents kill more than any health scourge
In an interview with the Channels Television monitored by Sunrise News desk, the Executive Director of Centre for Sustainable Mobility and Access Development (CESMAD) Dr Kayode Opeifa, urged the government to take very drastic steps to tame the hydra headed scourge of road traffic crashes. Time he said has come for Nigerian Government to start building safer roads to reduce carnage.
On the years of vehicles approved by the Federal Government?
Let me express my condolences on the about 1,000 people who have died this year alone in road accidents across the country.
I am not aware, and I do not think that the Nigerian government ever made any decision to restrict any vehicle of certain age and I’ve been in this industry for the past 20 years and I don’t think the government will make such decisions because it really doesn’t make sense. What is important is the state of the vehicle and not the age of the vehicle. A vehicle may be made in 2020 may not be good for the road and that’s why you have the vehicle inspection Services to do what they have to do. I also want to agree with the Corps Sector Commander and the Professor but let me add that there is now additional 2 Es to add, which is Engineering and Engagement. Engineering has to do with design of roads and intersections. He mentioned Otedola and what he did not tell you is that in 2011, the Lagos State Government engaged the Lagos State University where he works, and the University of Lagos, and we did a trial run of that road and put in place all the things he had mentioned and for five years after that there were no accidents at that point but the issues causing the accidents were not addressed, it is still there and that is the exit from the Otedola Estate that hot that road at 90 degrees and that is what distracts the driver coming down the hill causing the accidents. That was what was responsible for the last incident that happened about a month or two ago. Also to mention on the issue of age of vehicle, is that we should not be fixate on the age, we should be concerned about the state of the vehicle. Even if the state of the vehicle is good, if the operator is not in the right frame of mind or not qualified to manage that vehicle, it will still be the same thing because 90 percent of this fatalities can be taken care of by the driver.
Enforcement of the roads, many of the times, enforcement looks as a major issue.
I agree, that takes us back to the issue of sanity on the road. There must be enforcement, enforcement, and enforcement. The problem here is systemic. We have a situation where the nation looks away from infractions. For every incident or accidents leading to injuries and deaths on our roads, all of us are culpable. Recently drivers in Lagos protested against the traffic management authority complaining of extortion. Its not extortion they are complaining about too much enforcement and I’m going to say to those traffic enforcers, please don’t slow down, enforce 10 times the more, we need to get those rickety vehicles, we need to get those bad drivers, those people who are not ready to comply with the law, we need to get them out of our roads. We need to adopt safer road safety systems where we need to put up policies, regulations, laws and put out the nemesis of government. NGOs, Civil Societies, everyone must be involved in the management of that system, until we get to that stage, we shall continue to see all those rickety commercial buses on our roads. We must not allow them to be on the road. If someone is driving a vehicle that is not supposed to be on the road and using such for commercial purposes, it tells you that the man himself is not okay. He may be on paraga, alcohol, or hard drugs, so we need to put on some very stiff measures taimed at educating Nigerians from at least JSS 3, to start understanding what road safety is, it is about everything, it is about the need to ensure that we all do the right thing and the fact that anyone doing otherwise is a risk not only to himself but to the larger society. We need to build systems and ensure that all states of the federation are signed to that system and that is the rules and regulations that we are talking about. Lagos built a system, FCT built a system, Kaduna is building a system, the FRSC which is the lead safety agency should drive this system compliance by all states. The Federal Ministry of Health and the Federal Ministry of Transportation must also do something, they must ensure that states are up to the same level because the drivers’ licence that are obtainable here in Lagos is qualified to be used anywhere in Nigeria and the driver licence anywhere in Nigeria is also useable in Lagos. The road safety signs and signages must be qualified to be acceptable anywhere in Nigeria.
On bad roads and its impact on rate of accidents especially in ember months?
I agree completely that most of our roads are in very bad shape and most of these roads are not safe and cannot prevent accidents. We need to build safer roads that prevent accidents and when they occur, the injuries will not be too much and if there are injuries, there must be no deaths and if there are injuries there must be quick intervention mechanisms that will ensure that lives are saved. We need to build saver roads, our roads as it is currently are not safe. We do not even have a system that does regular road safety audit. Road safety audits are done by external bodies, not by government agencies, not by FRSC but a third party that will comply with the guidelines of the FRSC. Number two, if you watch Nigerian roads in the last eight years, you’ll realise that many lacked adequate infrastructure and signages. The last minister did a fantastic job by introducing lane markings, our road lacks basic feedback mechanisms that ensures they are safe, no lane markings, no traffic signal lights, no traffic signages, except for Lagos, federal capital territory and some of our federal roads that are recently constructed and maybe Kaduna and perhaps Kano. Not more than 10 states are actually complying with putting signages on the roads that would make our roads to be safe. Road injuries are not regarded as a disease, and 1.3million people die annually from road accidents more than the number of people that die from malaria. The reality is that road deaths are more than that of diseases and that is not including okada. The figure we have nationally of road deaths does not include fatalities on our inner roads or from okada accidents. We need safer road users, our drivers licensing systems across the states are terrible, the motor vehicle administration system is terrible, we need to make sure that every state in Nigeria have a driver licensing unit and motor vehicle administration unit removed from the clutch of the Board of Internal Revenue. Agreed it is revenue item, but while we are going after the revenue we must aggressively go after the safety. Less than 10 states have a proper driver licensing and motor vehicle administration system in the country. We cannot have safer road users that way. However, our vehicle inspection systems have improved, now we have computerized system, we must also commend the FRSC for putting up a number of guidelines, the national road safety strategies, but the road safety corps, the various ministries of transportation, all our governors must take road safety as a major issue, it is a health challenge. We are looking three to five percent of our GDP to road accidents, these are confirmed data by the World Health Organisation by the United Nations.