Road carnage: FRSC set to crackdown on rickety tankers, trucks

The Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) is collaborating with Vehicle Inspectorates (VIO) at the state level for a crackdown on rickety trucks and petroleum tankers that failed road worthy test. The operation that may see many of the tankers and container-laden trucks taken off the roads is to start from Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial nerve centre which has the highest number of trucks and tankers plying its roads in comparison with other states of the federation.

To ensure the effectiveness of the planned operation, Boboye Oyeyemi, the corps marshal who has been meeting with state governors and various stakeholders in the transportation sector, CityFile gathered is temporarily relocating from Abuja to Lagos from where the operation would be escalated to other states.

Over 3,000 petroleum tankers and container-laden trucks are said to be entering Lagos daily, many of them unfit to be on the roads thus constituting danger to other road users.

The high number of trucks and tankers in Nigeria’s biggest economy state is because Lagos aside being a commercial city, hosts the country’s most utilised seaports – Apapa and Tincan Ports with high volume of cargo.  And with government’s owned four petroleum refineries in comatose state, the economy currently depends almost 100 percent on imported petroleum products with Lagos as the only discharge point. As a result, tankers from other states of the federation daily throng state to lift petrol, diesel and kerosene.

Poor maintenance of the trucks and tankers coupled with bad roads and alleged reckless driving have continued to unleash pains on families as lives and properties are frequently lost to accidents involving petrol tankers and container-bearing trucks.

In the last couple of months close to 100 lives had been lost across the country, and properties worth millions of naira destroyed in petrol tanker accidents in Anambra, Lagos, Ogun, Ondo and other states where tankers fell off the road, spilled their contents and exploded flames leaving woe and misery in their wake.  In a similar manner, containers being ferried by rickety trucks have continued to fall on other moving vehicles leaving woe and misery in their wake.

Oyeyemi who spoke on the plan to arrest this carnage on a radio programme “Political Platform” monitored on RayPower FM, Friday, in Lagos said there was no going back this time. He said the enabling law of the FRSC empowers it to ensure the safety of lives on Nigerian roads, insisting that the wanton loss of lives and properties on the roads as a result of sheer neglect and failure of truck owners and tanker drivers to take precautionary measures can no longer be allowed.

“Our law is clear on this. I have so far met with twelve state governors and various transportation unions including the National Association of Road Transport Owners (NARTO). We are embarking on this operation together with the VIOs at the state level and we expect the cooperation of the governors. We are starting and by Tuesday (tomorrow) I will be in Lagos,” said Oyeyemi.

The corps marshal who disclosed that 90 to 95 percent of trucks plying the roads are aged, and required replacement, specifically condemned the practice whereby containers being ferried by aged trucks are not latched, a situation he lamented makes it easy for such containers to fall off the trucks and kill innocent motorists who have equal right to the roads.

“This cannot be allowed to continue. We are moving together with the VIOs and any truck found to be operating without properly latching the containers will be impounded, Oyeyemi said.