Shehu Mohammed, Corps Marshal, Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), in this interview with BusinessDay Managing Editor John Osadolor, Tony Ailemen, and Favour Okpale, reveals how over speeding i]s responsible for 70% of carnages on Nigerian roads and why FRSC is introducing new technologies to enhance road safety, check FRSC staff excesses, combat traffic violations, and improve monitoring of drivers in Nigeria.….Excerpts
Why does it take the Federal Road Safety Corps so long to process a driver’s licence?
It’s a question that we have been getting almost daily. But the difference between the driver’s licence and the national passport is that for the driver’s licence, you need to pass through training to be certified as a driver first. For the passport, anybody who is a citizen of the country and has the capacity to pay can have that identity. So you can get an international passport faster than the driver’s licence. Secondly, in a driver’s licence, we have what we call partners that are at the back end and doing the technical work. We have the mandate to produce and issue licences, but the production is being done by partners. And you know how it is: sometimes machines get obsolete after years of usage. And sometimes the software will also be obsolete and need to be updated. So, we are sometimes faced with a situation where our partners are not able to do those things as and when due. We may continue to have issues with the issuance of licences. But thank God, our partners have promised that in less than two, three weeks from now, they will have upgraded their software. They have brought printing machines that can produce 1,200 copies per hour.
By the time we start producing this licence, all the backlog that we have will be cleared. In fact, we are looking at having to issue a driver’s licence in less than three days if we are able to get these new machines. We already started testing it. And from the word they gave us today, any time from now, they’ll start producing licences with the new printers, and then we’ll get over it by the grace of God. When I came on board about two months ago, that was my own concern. We are working to see that all the challenges we are facing have been solved and then will move on.
“In doing so, we’re expected to educate drivers to be able to drive safely and obey road traffic rules and regulations so that they take the commuters to their various destinations safely and securely.”
Talk us through your major assignments as the Corps Marshal as well as the Federal Road Safety Corps as an organisation.
As Corps Marshal, I’m the main driver of the policies of the FRSC. As the leader of FRSC, I am in charge of 30,000 staff strength nationwide with almost 500 or more formations. This formation includes 12 zonal commands, 37 including FCT sector commands, and over 270 unit commands. We have driver’s licence centres in almost all the 774 local governments, or rather close to that. So, you can see the enormous formation that we have. In some places, we also have the area commands comprising two or three local governments who also support the sector commands because we are supposed to have three area commands in a state. Under these units, we also have what we call the outpost command. This is just a small unit that was set up to address areas where there are challenges of traffic, road crashes, etc.—that’s how enormous the task of being a corps marshal is. Top of my plans is to see that there are improvements in all the areas of operation because FRSC is certified by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO). By the convention of ISO, we are supposed to continue to improve on what we do.
The Federal Safety Corps, as an organisation, has the mandate to reduce and minimise road traffic crashes. We used to say “eliminate crashes,” but we have seen, all over the world, that there’s nowhere; no country can completely eliminate road crashes because we are humans and we are bound to make mistakes. Therefore, we also changed our own to minimise or reduce road traffic crashes and attendant fatalities, such as injuries and deaths that occurred with those crashes. Secondly, we’re expected to create a safe and secured motor environment for the motoring public, for all road users to navigate and carry out their lawful activities without hindrance. In doing so, we’re expected to educate drivers to be able to drive safely and obey road traffic rules and regulations so that they take the commuters to their various destinations safely and securely. In doing that, we have been educating the drivers over the years, for over three decades.
But this time around, we felt that we were leaving the commuters, the passengers out. We have seen that even when we go to motor parks, it’s the same driver that we meet. The passengers that you meet there are only on transit, trying to board and move to their destination. We also compare the statistics of road traffic crashes for the two years, 2023 and 2024. Half year, January to June 2023, and then January to June 2024. We realised that within those six months, we had over 5,730 crashes for 2023. For 2024, we had over 5,000. Just about 12.5 percent reduction in road traffic crashes. But on the injury side, fatality and death, the injuries we recorded were over 16,000. Then for the first half of this year, almost the same. We, however, realised that there was just about a 2.5 percent reduction in 2024.
The same thing with death, just about a 2.5 percent reduction also. But when you aggregate the number of deaths and the number of injuries to the number of crashes, the ratio is almost one to four. This one 5,000 plus; this one almost 20,000. We realised that more passengers were having issues, like dying and sustaining injuries, than the drivers. In most cases, you can agree with me that sometimes drivers even escape unhurt. So we felt we should also have a paradigm shift to not just educate the drivers but also educate the passengers, or commuters, through town hall meetings, taking the message to the grassroots. We have started the town hall meeting already. All over the country, we should be able to at least bring these road traffic crashes to the barest minimum.
When we do that, we will now be able to save more lives and save property, which then translates to productivity, economic improvement, and the citizens in general. So that’s what we are doing now.
Read also: FRSC launches mobile app to curb road crashes nationwide
From your numbers, who is more involved in an accident—the private or the commercial drivers?
From the statistics we have, the commercial drivers are more involved because they’re always on the road. Not only that, but even the fatality. A commercial driver minimum would take four passengers. That’s the minimum. In some cases, they take 20. In some, they take 50. In some, they even take more than 50. So you can imagine why, when crashes occur, the number of fatalities is usually higher. For private drivers, some are even alone in their cars, just one person. So even when crashes occur, it’s only one person. So that’s why we’re more concerned with the commercial drivers. And that’s why we introduced the speed limit device to curtail the speed of commercial drivers, because we felt that they are more involved in using the road and also in getting crashed. We call it a crash, but some call it an accident, like a layman calls it because he feels it’s an accident. But to us, we call it crash because it’s something that is avoidable. It’s preventable. It’s almost man-made. But accidents normally occur without even the knowledge of the person. But crashes occur because there are some precautions that you could have taken to avoid those crashes, which you failed to take.
Yes, as humans, we are vulnerable, but as vulnerable as we are, you can still decide to either overspeed or fail to maintain the vehicles.
What are the commonest cause(s) of crashes?
We do those analyses almost on a weekly basis. We have what we call the dashboard, which reports all the activities of our commands from that small unit that I called the outpost. They track and report all the occurrences to us, and then every Tuesday we sit down as management to analyze what the probable causes of crashes are and compare on a weekly basis. We compare last week, for instance, with those of this week. We look at the indices, number of deaths, and others. We found out that speed accounts for about 70 percent of the crashes that occur in this country. It will interest you to know that in some places, accidents happen or crashes occur because of bad roads. But in Nigeria, it is the good roads that are even causing more crashes because of over speeding. I can tell you, like here in Abuja, there is no week, no day that you don’t experience a crash. And it’s because of the good roads and people over speeding.
The same thing with Kaduna, Kano Road, and the major cities. Now the road is fantastic.
The Ibadan-Lagos route has the highest number of road crashes in Nigeria. Crashes occur because the roads are now good and motorists can now speed. They forget to understand that there’s only one life. I believe that it’s because of the volume of traffic that plies that road. Almost all of the northern part of the country is moving on that route to Lagos. So you can see the enormous volume, the density of traffic that moves on the route. So speed is the major cause of road crashes.
The second one that is close to that speed is the distraction, the use of phones. In some instances, while the driver is driving, he’s also engaging his phone. And then there are also instances of fatigue where the driver drove for almost five, six hours nonstop. And sometimes medications or drugs, not necessarily alcohol. There are some intoxicating substances that can stimulate the driver in such a way that he will feel high to move, forgetting that he is also building the capacity for a crash.
We are already in “Ember months,” which are known for a lot of seasonal travel. Are there new strategies being put in place by the FRSC policies for improved safety?
The Ember months to the FRC are a critical period in which we deploy all our arsenal, both human and material, on the road because of increased road traffic and activities, including even haulage. Before now, what we used to do was a motor park rally where we educated the drivers, sensitised the passengers in the motor park, and then increased our patrol activities where we deployed our men to the road all the time, sometimes 24 hours.
We also increased our rescue services, put all our ambulances on the highway, and also the towing trucks for clearing obstructions when they happen. But this time around, as I said earlier, we changed our strategy. We started from the last Salah. We did not do the normal motor park rally; rather, we did conferences. We invited the press and also got responses from them and other stakeholders on what we should do and what we are not doing right to improve. We now realise that the press conference went a long way and for almost a whole week, on all the radio, TV stations, and the newspapers. So we felt it’s even easier and better, and the catchment is higher than just the motor park rally. We will also deploy our town hall meetings to augment the motor park rallies.
So that’s what we intend to do this time around. We are going to have conferences in all 36 states, plus the FCT, at the same time, and you can imagine the enormous publication, broadcast, and impact that will happen. So that is the idea we have for the Ember months. So all stakeholders must be carried along to ensure that even when crashes occur, there won’t be many casualties.
Read also: FRSC sets 3 days for driver’s license rollout, begins passengers’ education
Are you collaborating with other government agencies or stakeholders like the National Union of Road Transport Workers?
That’s why I mentioned the press and stakeholders earlier. Those agencies or the organisations you mentioned, like the state road traffic agencies, are like a subset of the FRSC. It is the same mandate we are executing to reduce road traffic crashes and create a motorable environment. So they are part of us. We are also collaborating with the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA). They are also our stakeholders because we almost perform the same function when it comes to rescue. The Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps is also part of us because they also do rescue and also assist us in terms of security because we are not armed because of our civility. So it’s the police, the Nigerian police force, and the civil defence corps that normally support us when it comes to enforcement on the road because they provide the arms and then back us up. Also, we used to do this mobile court, and we also bring them as part of our team to support us in execution.
Does the FRSC have enforcement strategies? How do you ensure compliance by road users?
The new ones that we adopt are what you call the Joint Special Squad Patrols, especially with what we’re experiencing now in the overloading of vehicles. We see passengers sit on top of loads on trucks, especially around the north. From Kano, from Kastina, from Sokoto, and from Jigawa, you see a trailer packed with cows, and then you see passengers on top. And it will interest you to know that in some of those trucks, you find over a hundred passengers on top. So you can imagine if there are crashes. The recent one that we had was in Kano Junction, and I think they started from Kastina. When the crash happened, they were trying to negotiate a roundabout, and it was either that the driver was sleeping because it was early morning, around 3.30 a.m. He couldn’t negotiate, and the vehicle just crashed; 26 people died and 54 were injured in just one crash. This was not up to three months. That is what we are battling with.
So because of that, we now have what we call the Tax Force, comprising the police, the civil defence, and FRSC. We stay at strategic points—Kaduna, Abuja Junction; we have extended it to even Lokoja and the ninth mile now. We want to extend it all over so that when the vehicles come, we stop the vehicle, we bring down all the passengers, and we let them find another vehicle to carry them while the load, or the cattle, or whatever, moves so as to reduce the risk of those crashes. You can just imagine how human beings can be loaded with animals. We are not talking about ordinary loads but animals. And they are comfortable. By the time we check their wallet and whatever, you find them with money, some with over $100,000 in their pockets. With enough money that can take them to wherever they want to go.
That is why we are emphasising this town hall. So let the government, let the government of those states be aware that this is what their citizens are doing. So I think some states in the north, especially in the northwest, should be able to do more in terms of educating their citizens, because, sorry to say, you hardly find an average southwest person doing such things because of their level of exposure or enlightenment; the same thing with the southeast, you hardly find that. But if you go down to the northwest, down to Jigawa, you’ll even see some passengers in the boot, and I can show you some pictures. So you can imagine not only one person, three, or four, in a car boot, and they’ll use their hand to hold the boot. You can imagine when a crash occurs; it’s the same thing with the Niger area. You see a small starlet car with two cows inside. You can’t even imagine how they do it while also carrying human beings. I think the government needs to do more, and we also need to do more.
We realized that even after three decades of existence, it’s like we have not done much on this public education and sensitization, and that’s why we want to increase more. We want to do more on sensitization and public education.
Many have also accused your officers of not being transparent enough while enforcing traffic regulation. How are you dealing with that?
You have expanded the scope of what we want to do. When I came in, a major part of my policy trust was to address this. We may not completely eradicate it, but let’s bring it to the barest level that we can. One of the things that I considered was to rejig the operational strategy. The second one is training and retraining, because probably if you send a staff to work for you and the person is not well trained, you don’t expect a good result. And as Nigerians, I always give examples of the production process, where you put input, it passes through a process, and you get output. Part of the output you get is waste, a by-product. Part of that waste is also useful somewhere. And that is the same thing with recruitment; what we recruit is from the Nigerian society. It’s not different; we’re not bringing them from the moon.
It’s the same Nigerians, and then we push them into the process of training and retraining. And when they pass out, we are still going to get the good product that we want. We’re also going to get the waste. We’re also going to get the by-product. Those waste and the by-product are sometimes the ones that we’re having challenges with. Those are the ones that we always terminate or dismiss when we find them wanting. Also, the welfare package is being improved upon. That also brings me to the mobile app. When I came, I met FRSC as a technology-driven organisation, especially with the driver’s licence and all of our processes and products.
But I felt like we should bring something new to make an impact. I brought out the concept of the FRSC mobile app, which is going to be like keying into the renewed hope agenda of Mr. President. Also with the ease of doing business, the app is going to kind of have a one-stop shop for FRSC, whereby all our processes and products are embedded, and it is free. Once you download that, what you will have is that, first of all, as a passenger, it will alert you when the vehicle you are using is speeding above the limit. It will alert you and continue to ring to show you that this vehicle that you are in is going beyond the speed limit.
It will also alert you metres ahead, wherever there is a black spot, where there is a pothole or whatever; it will also alert you that in front, 200 metres or 300 metres, there is a black spot that the driver needs to be cautious of. That is the second one. The third one, you can also program it to maintain your vehicle and give you the time when you need to service your vehicle. The frequency, the period when you need to service. It will also alert you when your tire needs to be changed. The beauty of it, again, is that it will alert you about the traffic situation in that vicinity and also provide a solution to divert to another route.
Another one is that we have the National Traffic Radio that will disseminate information. The catchment is only within Abuja. So if you have that app, anywhere you are, you can listen to that National Traffic Radio. The main beauty of the app is that, as you were saying, it can checkmate our officers while in operation because, as you are passing and you notice they are doing something, you can just take a picture of what they are doing and then send it to us online, in real time. In our monitoring unit here, we have a command and control unit centre where they see whatever is going on live. So once you post that, they will see. They will see where the team is; they will see the faces of our officers; they will see their names; everything will show; it’s like an interface with the public.
That’s what we call the eyewitness report that we can now use to checkmate our men while on duty. And that, I think, will greatly reduce the incivility and some of the extortion or whatever that our men are doing with the road. We are going to have version two. At the end of the day, if we are able to get this functionality working right, the drivers are going to be checked. The speed is also going to be reduced, and portholes are also going to be identified before you reach them. It means that we are going to reduce those traffic crashes because the idea is what impact it is going to have—we are going to reduce the road traffic crashes that are happening and the attendant fatalities. And then, not only that, there are so many features in it, which we need to also continue to unveil as time goes on.
And there’s also this automatic 122 emergency number, which, once you dial, will tell us where you are and what you need us for. It will also help us check the genuineness of driver’s licences. You can also just put the number of a driver licence to know whether that driver licence is genuine or not. And then the same thing with number plates. Initially, we wanted to even indicate the owner, but we felt that it could be used for criminal activities. The app will also tell you the authentic driving school that you can attend. All those things are embedded in the functionality of the mobile app. It’s just a step forward to our technology-driven process that we, the FRSC, is embarking upon.
Are you planning to arm your men?
We are purely civil. Arming our men is probably for guarding our infrastructure, our offices, and our installations, but not to use the arms for enforcement because we are purely civilians. But we can have what we call the arm squad for intervention. Sometimes, we also experience harassment and provocation, and you have to protect your officers. So, if you have a squad and something is happening, they can just call the office for intervention, for support. That is the idea we want to put across, not for us to go on the road with arms because you scare the road users and you cannot tell the psychology of some people. It might completely kill our operations if we start using arms on the roads.
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