January 13, 2017. Mangled bodies of passengers of a Hiace bus littered the Onicha-Ugbo end of the Lagos-Benin expressway. Heads were rolling on the ground, separated from their bodies. Two commercial buses had had a head-on collision, resulting in the death of six people, with 11 others injured. Onlookers watched as the injured writhed in pains. They were possibly afraid of being asked to pay hospital bills by the doctors. Some could also be afraid of being accused of murder by the police if they should take the victims to hospitals.
Two passers-by summoned the courage and provided first-aid services for the struggling victims. This is the story of Nigeria, where lives seem to mean little to the government and its agencies. But this is a story for another day.
Blood is flowing on Nigerian roads. Families are constantly in tears and sorrow for losing their loved ones—bread winners, in many cases.
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) recently released a report entitled, ‘Road Transport Data for Fourth Quarter 2017’, revealing that 1,306 Nigerians died in road accidents in the fourth quarter of 2017. That’s the last three months of 2017.
The report showed that out of the number, 1,019 were male, representing 78 percent; while 287 were female, representing 22 percent.
In February this year, the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) came up with another report which recorded 4,410 deaths by road accidents in 2017.
The report said there were all together 7,937 road crashes in 2017, with 23,392 victims injured.
The numbers were worse in 2016, when 4,527 accident victims died, with 26,749 injured.
Analysts attribute the rising rate of accidents to rapid growth in urbanisation.
In 2012, the United Nations Organisation (UN) put Nigeria’s urbanisation rate at 51 percent, suggesting that over 80 million people lived in the cities. Currently, the UN says this number is growing at an annual rate of 3.5 percent.
“Consider a city like Lagos. This is the smallest state in Nigeria with a size of only 3,345 square kilometres. Yet you have over 20 million residents. And you have almost 12 million cars in the city. Tell me how you won’t have high rate of road traffic accidents?” asked Usuala Nkem, an economist and urbanisation expert.
“As people move from villages to cities, they change their economic well-being and acquire cars, bikes and bicycles. What we should do is now to strategise and focus on prevention of accidents and injuries,” Nkem said.
Talking about prevention, Nigeria has a number of federal and state agencies that work to reduce road traffic accidents across the country. The Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) is in charge of monitoring and enforcing traffic rules on federal roads. The Nigeria Police also has a traffic arm, with a responsibility to control, movement of vehicles and checkmate transport-relate crimes.
But each of the 36 states has its own traffic agency that performs similar functions in town and villages. Notable among them is the Lagos State Transport Management Agency (LASTMA), which is seen as the most effective and efficient. All the traffic agencies monitor compliance to traffic rules and regulations. They ensure that drivers have their licenses and sometimes check whether they have fire extinguishers or not.
However, analysts worry that Nigerian agencies do not take sufficient preventive measures. For example, BusinessDay has observed that traffic agencies do not request drivers’ licenses and fire extinguishers from commercial vehicle drivers. Yet these vehicles ferry more passengers than private cars.
More so, despite being the most populous country in Africa, the country still faces recurring cases of drink-driving, which is seen as the chiefest cause of road traffic accidents.
“Often it is an innocent person who suffers, not the driver who is over the drink drive,” says the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, a British charity that aims to save lives and prevent life-changing injuries which occur as a result of accidents.
The maximum blood alcohol limit in England, Wales and Northern Ireland is 80mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood (80mg/100 ml).
In Scotland, it was lowered to 50mg/100ml blood on December 5, 2014.
In Northern Ireland, the limit is the same as in England and Wales, but there are plans to lower it, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents says.
However, Nigeria does not measure alcohol limit in the blood and does not have the technology to do so.
“We can begin to use breath tests and analysers. Anyone above a certain level of alcohol in their blood should then be stopped from driving and even prosecuted,” said Ike Ibeabuchi, managing director of a chemical firm.
Moreover, the rate of fire accidents on roads is high. In 2016, Lagos State alone recorded 115 cases of fire accidents involving takers. Nwanovim George, former chief fire service, Lagos State Fire Service, said in early 2017.
“We wish to advise our drivers to be careful on the road and to always make use of their fire extinguishers anytime there is fire,” George said.
Samuel Adewumi, an award-winning Nigerian inventor, recently introduced a new technology called Fire-Boss Automatic Extinguisher designed to automatically forestall fire outbreaks resulting from car accidents, which is mostly responsible for most deaths by road accidents.
Up till now, his technology is not used by any state.
Nigerians are also asking drivers to check their vehicles before leaving each day. A number of commercial bus drivers leave as early as 5am in major cities without doing proper examinations of their brakes, fuel tanks, steering and other parts of their vehicles.
“Careless drivers ‘litter’ our roads. They wake up in the morning and pick up passengers without buying fuel and checking the functionalities of their vehicles. At each metre, their vehicles break down and passengers set down and do some pushing,” an angry Hamzat Abdullahi, a trader in Kwara State, north-central of Nigeria, said.
“They ‘pack’ 20 passengers in buses that are supposed to take 14 passengers. In many cases their vehicle doors are so strong that it is only them that can open the doors. If a fire incident occurs or armed robbers attack, no one can escape. This is the height of irresponsibility on their part and the part of traffic agencies,” Abdullahi said.
ODINAKA ANUDU
