Road accidents claimed more lives in January than coronavirus, malaria - Fashola

The Federal Government has expressed worry about the increasing number of accidents on the nation’s highways.

It said road accidents claimed more lives in January 2021 than COVID-19 pandemic and malaria fever combined.

Works and Housing Minister Babatunde Fashola said this on Wednesday while addressing Sate House correspondents at the end of the week’s virtual Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting chaired by President Muhammadu Buhari.

Fashola said his concern was contained in a note he presented to the FEC on the need for the government and Nigerians to be wary of the situation and take it easy on the roads.

The minister said most of the accidents were not caused by bad roads but by many other factors.

He said the Lagos-Ibadan highway, the Abuja-Kano highway, and Abuja-Keffi-Lafia highway, recorded the highest cumulative number of road accidents.

“Because of the importance, Council was of the considered view that I brief about the need to take notice of the increased number of road traffic crashes on Federal highways. This is because every month, we get reports from officials of the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC), who are usually one of the first arrivals at crash sites on the highways.

“Those reports are addressed to the Presidency through the Secretary to Government of the Federation (SGF), where the FRSC is domiciled. But they are copied to my office and we pay attention to these things. We noticed, unusually, high numbers in January 2021, which we compared with January 2020, 2019 and 2018.

“We saw that in January 2021, the number of people who died from road crashes exceeded the combined number of people who died from malaria and COVID-19 in the same month.

“While malaria and COVID were receiving national concerted attention, we considered it necessary to bring this to the attention of government as part of our strategy for protecting lives and property,” he said.

Fashola said the Lagos-Ibadan, Abuja-Keffi-Lafia and Abuja-Kano highways were identified as recording the highest number of casualties.

“So, we identified the need for various actions to be taken from municipal, local government level to state and national level. I acknowledge the fact that after this memo was listed, I got the notice of a Presidential Committee, the National Road Safety Advisory Council, which will be inaugurated tomorrow (Thursday) by the Office of the Vice-President.”

“This is one-step in the right direction under the aegis of the National Economic Council (NEC). Therefore, that should bring all the 36 states together. We can take this conversation there,” Fashola said.

The minister listed some factors that contribute to the carnage the measures being put in place to address the problem.

“We saw that the biggest factor for these accidents: from speeding, loss of control, wrongful overtaking, brake failure, tyre blow-out points, to the role of the driver.  Consistently over the years and this data is available, the impact of bad roads and accidents was less than 2 per cent.

“These factors I have mentioned: speeding, loss of control, wrongful overtaking, cumulate to over 70 per cent. If we reduce this, we bring the numbers down.

“So, I think our focus as a government is that we’ve agreed that the driver has a role to play, starting from education and certification. So, this is going to be a multi-disciplinary activity from the Ministry of Education, Ministries of Information, FRSC, state and local governments in terms of how they test and certify drivers,” he said.