The Zone 2 Command, Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), in charge of Ogun and Lagos states, is strategising in road safety campaigns to reduce fatality at the grassroots.
The FRSC Ogun Sector Commander, Mr Clement Oladele, gave the assurance in Lagos at the flag-off of Ember month’s safety campaign at Ojota Park.
“Fatality starts from our immediate environments; if death does not occur in Ogun, Lagos, Nigeria or Africa, it will not increase the whole world data.
The world is only waiting to aggregate the data; that is why all of us must go back to the grassroots, by sensitising people to the need for road safety to ensure sanity on the roads,’’ he said.
According to him, the World Health Organisation and UN are worried by the rate of road accidents globally.
“Formerly all over the world, we used to hear 1.2 million deaths, but it has increased to 1.3 million deaths.
“It starts from our immediate environments; so, people at the grassroots must be well tutored on road safety,’’ he said.
The FRSC boss appealed to motorists to comply with traffic rules, saying that the corps would not relent in its enforcement.
He gave the assurance that the corps would continue to enlighten the motoring public until it would become road safety conscious.
“We are not tired to do it, and we will continue to collaborate with our stakeholders to ensure that road safety message goes viral.”
Oladele had said that available statistics for the first three quarters in the zone indicated that road crashes rose from 583 in 2018 to 882 in 2019, or by 51 per cent.
The fatality crashes also moved from 259 to 311, an increase of 20.1 per cent during the period, according to him.
He said that during the period, enforcement outcome measured by offenders arrested over the same period grew from 54,355 to 59,037 or by 8.61 per cent,’’
