Corps Marshal Mohammed Frowns at Use of Trailer As Passenger Vehicle, BECKONS ON Leaders to Caution Subjects 

The Corps Marshal, Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), Shehu Mohammed, has solicited the assistance of Traditional, Religious and Youth leaders in the Corps’ ongoing campaign against road accidents, according to a statement e-signed by the Public Education Officer, Corps Commander Olusegun Ogungbemide, and made available to the National Association of Online Security News Publishers (NAOSNP).

Tje Corps Marshal prevailed on the leaders to by caution their subjects on the need to discontinue the use of trailers for their trips. This is following the fatal road crash that occurred on the busy Kano-Zaria Highway involving a trailer with about 90 persons on board.

The crash which occured as a result of speed violation that eventually led to loss of control happened at exactly 0315HRS on Monday 1 July 2024, killing 25 male adults as well as leaving a total of 53 other male adult victims with injuries of different sorts. However, FRSC emergency and rescue team was able to rescue 12 persons without injury from the crash.

The rescued victims have been taken to Murtala Muhammad and Nasarawa Specialist hospital in Kano State for proper medical attention. While the driver of the truck has been arrested and handed over to the Police for further investigation and possible prosecution.

You would recall that in the last couple of months, the Corps rose to the challenge of confronting this bad road use behaviour on all fronts. This gesture led to a high level of partnership between the Federal Road Safety Corps, leadership of the various Transport Unions, Security Agencies, as well as State Traffic Management Agencies.

In furtherance to the aforementioned actions, the Corps went a step further to establish and flag-off an Inter-Agency Joint Task Force so as to give a holistic approach to enforcing compliance against the use of trailers as passenger vehicles; as well as mitigate road traffic crashes, fatalities and injuries emanating from the lawlessness of trailer drivers.

These JTF which took off its operation in Niger, Bauchi, Taraba and Kaduna States and later extended to some notorious corridors of the Southern part of the country, has successfully arrested as at today, a total of 362 trailers loaded with 5169 passengers hanging on top of goods and animals. As part of the operations, the JTF dropped over 3530 passengers who were mandated to take alternative vehicles designed for conveying passengers. This is aside the aggressive sensitisation and advocacy campaigns going on across board.

Irrespective of these efforts, most of these commuters still disregard the sensitisation campaigns and travel to their destinations using these trailers as means if conveyance.

More worrisome is the fact that a whole lot of these trailer drivers travel at night when the operational arm of the Corps does not operate to escape arrest.

It is on the strength of the foregoing that the Corps Marshal calls on these Leaders to compliment FRSC’s efforts towards bringing these deadly road traffic violations to a halt by sensitising their Subjects further.