Abuja – The Corps Marshal, Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC), Dr Boboye Oyeyemi, has appealed to state traffic agencies to place road safety above revenue generation in their operations.
Oyeyemi made the call on Tuesday in Abuja when he declared open the maiden meeting with Heads of State Traffic Management Agencies.
He said while fines were necessary to curtail road traffic excesses , it should not be the main priority.
He said the UN Decade of Action 2011-2020 for road safety demanded that member countries provided a direction toward achieving the vision for road safety using the safe system approach, and not otherwise.
The corps marshal said that all over the world, road safety was a shared responsibility and Nigeria could not afford to jettison it.
He said this was why it became was necessary for states to establish their own traffic agencies.
He said that out of the 36 states of the federation, 16 states had established traffic management agencies through the enactment of appropriate laws by their respective Houses of Assembly.
Oyeyemi said the meeting was aimed at activating the Nigeria Road Safety Strategy (NRSS) which was Nigeria’s response to UN decade of Action and to measure Nigeria’s capacity to deliver on road safety.
He said the overall objective of NRSS was to establish an integrated national approach toward reducing incessant occurrence of deaths and serious injuries as well as damage to property as a result of crashes.
“The NRSS document recognised that road safety is multi-faceted and therefore, outlined the responsibilities of various tiers of government and public and private sectors.
“It sought to harmonise the different road safety efforts by emphasising the vison, goal, purpose, output as well as the initiatives for road safety management in Nigeria.
“The FRSC, even with its powers to operate on all roads of the federation, has consistently advocated for joint ownership of road safety by all Nigerians and for the states to give desired direction within their domains,’’he said.
The corps marshal also called for the harmonisation of all road traffic offences in the country under the National Road Traffic Regulations and adoption of the offender’s register to have a uniform offences regulation.
“Synergy is crucial to effective road safety administration without which the nation’s roads would degenerate into anarchy.
“I urge all state traffic agencies to respond promptly and tow broken down vehicles from the roads to avoid accidents and to always help in complementing the effort of FRSC,’’ he said.
Responding, Mr Mohammed Zarewa, Managing Director, Kano Road Traffic Agency (KAROTA) , commended the FRSC for initiating the meeting.
Zarewa said this would give the agencies an avenue to brainstorm on traffic challenges.
He appealed to the FRSC to make the meeting a quarterly event so as to equip states with more information and training to further strengthen traffic in their domains while curbing crashes.
Also speaking, Mr Chris Olakpe, CEO, Lagos State Traffic Management Agency (LASTMA), urged traffic agents to be friendly and approachable.
Olakpe also urged state governments to collaborate on the highways in order to meet up with traffic challenges in their states.
He said that Lagos would collaborate with Ogun so as to ease traffic on the Lagos-Ibadan expressway.