Abuja – Mr Boboye Oyeyemi, the Corps Marshal, Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC), on Friday decried the incessant assault on the personnel of the commission, while performing their lawful duties.
Oyeyemi, who spoke while fielding questions from newsmen in Abuja said that FRSC would take stringent action against the perpetrators.
“The assault on FRSC personnel is on the increase and I am going to press for maximum charges in respect of this; we will not allow this to go on anymore.
“For the mere fact that we are not carrying arms for now does not mean that drivers and road users should take liberty to be assaulting our personnel.
“Enough is enough; we want to appeal to drivers to be careful and to respect the traffic rules and regulations in the course of going about their businesses.
“The assault by the passengers too is on the increase, a passenger in the vehicle has no business if there is an infraction and the patrol team stops a vehicle.
“They are not even supposed to come down from the vehicle and assault the patrol team.
‘’I will not take this and I will press for charges and ensure that appropriate action of imprisonment and payment of fine is meted out to the culprits’,’ he said.
On tyres, the FRSC boss said that there was an urgent need to control the importation of substandard tyres into the country to check the rate of road crashes in the country.
He said that there were over 250 brands of tyres today in the country, adding that some of them were unknown to the public and not meant for the tropical zone like Nigeria.
‘’These tyres are just brought in, they are substandard, some have even expired, yet sold to the public.
‘’For the fact that the brick of tyres are still good does not mean that the Tyre is ok.
“So, it is a big problem we are having now, because most of these crashes are as a result of speed and Tyre blowout.’’
He attributed most of the crashes to the attitude of commercial vehicle drivers, adding that “ its glaring that 65 per cent of crashes today has to do with commercial vehicles.’’ (NAN)
