Experts have urged the Federal Government to establish a unified national crash database to reduce the spate of road accidents in the country.

In a statement to The PUNCH, Transportation Safety Researcher, Mujeeb Abdulrazaq, cautioned that Nigeria may find it difficult to significantly improve road safety outcomes unless urgent steps are taken to enhance the accuracy, consistency, and coordination of the country’s crash data, which he says remains too fragmented to support effective decision-making.

“To address the challenge, there is an urgent need for the establishment of a unified national crash database linking FRSC, police, hospitals, mortuaries, and insurance providers.” He recommended adopting digital reporting tools, GPS-enabled crash logging, and stronger partnerships with academic and research institutions.

“We need to fix the foundation,” he said. “If we can count every crash and every life lost, then we can finally design policies that match the true scale of the problem.”

Abdulrazaq, a specialist in advanced safety analytics and crash modelling, explained that while modern, data-driven approaches have become global best practices for reducing road traffic deaths, Nigeria’s current crash statistics are too incomplete and inconsistent to support effective interventions.

According to him, referring to recently published figures from the Federal Road Safety Corps, there are about 2,600 crashes per quarter, roughly 10,000 incidents annually, with 5,000 to 6,000 fatalities per year.

He described these numbers as “statistically impossible” for a nation of more than 230 million people, noting that independent estimates from international health agencies place Nigeria’s annual road deaths much higher.

He stated, “Global modelling suggests Nigeria may be losing close to 40,000 people each year to road traffic crashes. That is an eight- to ten-fold difference. If our official numbers suggest Nigeria has one of the lowest fatality rates in the world, but global indicators show otherwise, then the problem is with the data system, not the analysis.”

Abdulrazaq attributed the discrepancies to structural weaknesses in the country’s reporting process. The FRSC, the Nigeria Police Force, hospitals, and other institutions maintain separate crash databases, often with no harmonised reporting framework. As a result, many incidents, especially those occurring in rural areas or where victims die after hospital admission, never appear in national records.

He added that recent statistical digests contain missing information on pedestrians, motorcyclists, cyclists, and other vulnerable road users, limiting Nigeria’s ability to understand how different road users are affected. He stressed that “data-driven safety planning only works when the underlying data is credible. You cannot identify hotspots, enforce the right laws, or design safer roads if the numbers are incomplete.”

Comparing Nigeria to similar countries, Abdulrazaq pointed out that South Africa, with a population of about 60 million, officially records over 12,000 road deaths each year. Kenya and Ghana, despite facing challenges of underreporting, still publish substantially higher and more realistic figures relative to their population sizes. Meanwhile, countries such as India, Brazil, the United States, and the United Kingdom have made progress by establishing unified national crash databases that integrate police reports, hospital records, insurance data, and vital registries.

“Those systems allow officials to know exactly where crashes are happening, why they are happening, and which interventions are working,” he noted. “That level of visibility is what Nigeria urgently needs.”

Beyond the data gaps, Abdulrazaq highlighted the broader economic and social implications. Road traffic injuries are among the leading causes of death in Nigeria, particularly affecting young adults in their productive years. Economic assessments place the cost of road crashes at over N800bn annually, equivalent to nearly five per cent of GDP, when productivity losses and long-term medical expenses are considered.

He said, “The consequences go far beyond statistics. Without reliable data, emergency response planning, road design improvements, enforcement strategies, and public safety campaigns will continue to miss their targets.”