Patrick Okohue 
Nigeria has lately witnessed a series of road traffic accidents involving mostly high calibre fuel-bearing articulated vehicles, with most of them resulting in infernos that claimed numerous lives across the country.
These accidents and several others involving other vehicles, especially buses, have become a cause for concern for many road transport stakeholders who are worried that unless things are done quickly, the situation may spiral out of control. A road safety expert, geographer and retired pioneer officer of the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC), Ayodeji Peter Oyedokun, has waded into the challenges on the nation’s roads, proffering solutions that could help address the issues.
DUI
According to Oyedokun, a former General Manager of the Lagos State Traffic Management Authority (LASTMA) and pioneer Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Lagos State Drivers’ Institute: “There have been a number of very important things that I have been saying for long – and that is driving under the influence is a very important aspect of traffic safety.
“Now, there is no accident that we have seen and those that we have arrested, it has not been proven that all the people are driving under the influence, but many are driving under influence. “Unfortunately, when I was the pioneer CEO of the Lagos State Drivers’ Institute, we worked on the DUI (Driving Under Influence) Law and it was passed at the Lagos State House of Assembly
“So, the aim was there must be tests on those driving on the use of alcohol. The lawmakers worked on the law well, held organised stakeholder engagements, for everybody to agree on what is the acceptable Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC). This can be done nationally. “Thus when a vehicle summersaults, we will normally say it was caused by brake failure or over-speeding. However, even if the driver is dead, the hospital can still detect whether there was alcohol in the driver’s blood. That’s the first one.
“The second one is speed and speeding. There are technological ways you can monitor speed and issue tickets to those over speeding. We have the driver’s details through his plates and license, and we can thus send tickets to his home. “You may say you will not be able to catch everybody, but if you catch one person and that person is brought to book, he will tell someone else.
That person will tell another person and before long the news will have spread.” However, one challenge that may come with all these is awareness which is key, especially when dealing with members of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), who are mostly not well educated, but the Lund University of Education (Sweden) and University of Ibadan trained traffic safety expert, says such issue was taken care of through the Driver’s Institute in Lagos.
Drivers’ Institute
“Lagos has handled that by the establishment of the Lagos State Drivers’ Institute. When I got to Lagos in 2005, January 1, that was when I took over as LASTMA GM, in April of the same year, was when I wrote the proposal for the setting up of the Drivers’ Institute.
“You know why? We found out that what was causing more confusion on the highway was ignorance among drivers. They don’t know the rules and regulations guiding the safe use of the highways. So, just apprehending them may not solve the problem. So, I wrote the proposal to Asiwaju (Bola Tinubu) who was governor at that time. The proposal went to the Lagos State House of Assembly and it was passed. “The law setting it up was met.
So, the law continued from there until Asiwaju left and Babatunde Fashola, who was his Chief of Staff at that time, remembered what I had written and went and said he was pulling me out of LASMA to go and set up what I had written. So, what LASDRI is doing is very great. “What we did in LASDRI was a challenge to bring the type of drivers we are talking about to the classroom to teach them, because we know we could not just bring them to the classroom speaking English.
“So, the first thing we did was to do the first driver’s education curriculum in Nigeria. I invited FRSC, VIO, University of Lagos and many other bright minds and we came up with a curriculum that would teach drivers from preliminary driving to best practices in driving. “Now, after we finished that one, we asked, how are we going to communicate these things to them? These people have not been in classrooms before.
How do you communicate with them and make it interesting to them? “We now decided on sight and soundfull multimedia. We did instructional material. We called it ‘Defensive Driving Technique’. “All that is in the curriculum, we did it in video. We produced it in our main languages of Hausa, English and Igbo. I went to the governor at that time to play it for him. He was very interested, but said every video must be on a single CD.
“So that anywhere in the world, you want to look at it, you can pick it up and you are able to use it, he challenged us and we did it. “So, we have that one. Then we knew that they would have eye problems, anybody with eye problems, we had optometrists. We set up, in one and a half years, I chose the six buildings. The one in Ikorodu, one in Badagry, one in Lagos Island, the one in Ikeja, and the one in Epe.
Traffic management
Despite his achievements in the area of traffic management in the country, the Osun State-born expert in road safety policy formulation and implementation is not happy with the level of traffic management and frequency of road traffic crashes in Nigeria. He said: “It saddens me because lives are often lost in traffic accidents. “You see, the most enviable country that I have been to that has the perfect record on road safety is Sweden.
There, they have a programme that is called ‘Vision Zero’. It is not acceptable for any Swedish man to die or to be seriously injured in a road crash. “They make all organisations work towards that issue. To work towards that involves doctors, engineers, those who are planners, and everybody, people in the road construction companies. “For example, let me tell you, if you travel interstate here in Nigeria, you will see some roads where you see slow down, construction ahead. By the time you get to that place, there is no construction ahead.
By the time a driver gets there, they have finished that construction maybe two months ago, but they forgot to remove the sign. “Then how will people that are seeing those signs, respect the signs? So, everybody must come together.
The roads are for everybody to use. We must raise our interest in making sure that we don’t lose lives wantonly.” He believes to achieve zero accidents on the roads requires more collaboration by all concerned in road activities. “There are radars for monitoring speed. There are so many types of equipment to use to discover your blood alcohol.
They are cheap equipment. But it’s the willpower to get it done. “Our people, when they go abroad, they don’t dare drive even if they have just taken a teaspoon of alcohol. People are afraid to do so, because it’s a very serious offense.
“But here we have people selling all types of alcoholic drinks at the motor parks. We should get more serious,” he said. Oyedokun, who is knowledgeable in patrol and surveillance, enforcement, rescue operations, accident prevention, database development, speed control and monitoring, said his passion for road safety did not start when he was invited to join the FRSC at its inception, but way before then.
“You see, there was a time, that would be 1985 or 1986, that I belonged to a club. Maybe you may know which club it is, but I will not mention any club. “The corruption at the toll gates along the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway was very, very high at that time.
So, I belonged to a group that did manual counting of vehicles passing the expressway to expose the monumental fraud that was going on. “We did the counting manually and in fact, we had to hide inside the bush from the police, but we were still able to produce our results which prompted the government to scrap the toll gates. However, during this period, something happened.
I witnessed an accident where so many people died. “Since that incident, I developed a passion, reading about road safety, crashes, and all these things. But fortunately, Professor Wole Soyinka was now given the challenge to set up the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) as a way of reducing the carnage on our highways. That was how I got into the FRSC (in November 1988). So, it was passion that led me to joining. “At the FRSC I wore many caps.
I remember in December 1988, there was an instruction from the headquarters in Osuntokun, Ibadan to open two offices in Lagos, because every headquarters of federal agencies must be in Lagos and the Lagos State Command.
“So, I was asked to come to Lagos to find out where I can nurture a command. So, I came with my video camera to Ojodu Berger where the FRSC office is situated now. That time, I went to the VIO office where I met a man. I have forgotten his name. “He was the one who showed me this place (FRSC office). Then this place was a model driving school established by former Governor Lateef Jakande.
“Then, there was only one building on the land and there were traffic lights, but they were overgrown with weeds. “So, after my surveillance in Lagos, I returned to Ibadan. I gave the VHS tape to Dr. Olu Agunloye, who was our chief, who sent it to Professor Soyinka. “Professor moved to Lagos to meet then Military Governor Raji Rasaki and told him this is where I want to use to start the road safety commission in Lagos. And he gave us the green light.”
Curtailing accidents
Oyedokun believes that accident rates in the country can be curtailed to a very large extent, but the government must have the will power to do the right things in addressing the challenge.
According to him, the government must collaborate with states to take control of what happens on the highways across the country and to control substance use by drivers through a coordinated pattern across the country and the government must also be prepared to invest in the sector to achieve it.
He is also of the view that having a common standard in driver’s training and continuous education to ensure that drivers on the road knows what to do when faced with challenges should not only be encouraged, but enforced.
Though he is of the view that beyond his suggestions more could be done, he believes that it will be a good place to start in addressing road traffic crashes and with time improvements will be made and the country can gradually move towards zero accidents on the nation’s highways.
