By Kelechi Ogunleye
Abuja – The Vehicle Inspection Office (VIO), Federal Capital Territory (FCT), says it has trained over 300 officers on the use of ‘Abuja Inspector,’ a new App, for inspection of vehicles within the territory.
The Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the agency, Mr Kalu Emetu, disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Tuesday in Abuja.
Emeu said the Abuja Inspector App was introduced to enable the officers detect vehicles with defects from a distance.
“Once a vehicle is coming we look at your plate number, key it into the Abuja Inspector App to get the chassis number.
“It will check whether the vehicle’s papers had been renewed, know when the vehicle was registered and get the personal details of the owner of the vehicle,” he said
He said the training was ongoing and every officer of the agency was expected to know how to operate the new App.
“We constantly train our officers because we want every officer to know how to operate it and once you know it, you don’t need to flag down every vehicle.
“All you have to do is to key in the plate number of the vehicle from a distance to know if it is necessary to flag down the vehicle,” he said.
He, however, noted the disadvantage of the App: “When a vehicle is at sight you may not get the number due to speed and before you key in the vehicle’s plate number the vehicle would have passed.
“But officers in operation are trained and advised on physical inspection in situations like this. From physical inspection you could still know whether the vehicle is road worthy or not,” he said.
Emetu said officers that had been trained were training those yet to receive the training.
He said operational officers in the territory had started applying the Abuja Inspector to detect vehicle defaulters.