House Asks FRSC to Ensure Proper Licensing of Tankers, Trucks to Curb Accidents

By Udora Orizu

The House of Representatives yesterday urged the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) to ensure strict compliance with relevant standards, regulations and the Code of Practice for heavy duty drivers and operators of articulated lorries to reduce crashes, injuries and fatalities.

The House mandated that the FRSC’s registration processes should be made to compel tanker, tractor-trailer transport operators to define the type of heavy duty vehicles business operation they are engaged in and then register their companies with the commission.

It also mandated the commission to lay down stringent administrative procedures concerning tankers/trailers operations in Nigeria, especially for the first-time articulated vehicles operators, applicants for FRSC registration before they would be enrolled in the New Entrant Safety Assurance Program (NESAP) that required them to pass safety audit.

The resolutions followed the adoption of a motion sponsored by Hon. Ben Rollands Igbakpa.

Igbakpa said that the House was aware that the responsibilities of the FRSC included monitoring, certifying, registering and enforcing compliance with regulations governing safety operations of articulated vehicles in Nigeria.

He attributed the increase in road accidents to the conduct of unprofessional drivers who were not properly inspected before they were licensed by the FRSC.

He lamented that most of the tankers drivers are adolescents and could not even speak or write simple English, yet these persons when issued license would endanger other road users contrary to the FRSC registration process.

Igbakpa said: “Concerned that every now and then, we see uncertified driving schools spring up and issuing driving certificates at will to untrained learners without any modicum of supervision by the regulatory agencies. These inexperience drivers over time have unfortunately continued to maximise road carnages and properties destruction, due to general lack of enforcement and enlightenment of the necessity to undergo compulsory driving training in a certified driving school.”

The lawmaker warned that unless the vehicle licensing processes, as well as the safety requirements for articulated vehicles operations in Nigeria, were rejigged with an innovative and well thought out curriculum for drivers, the incidence of road carnage and property destruction occasioned by the activities of articulated trucks and tankers/trailers drivers would continue unabated and even assume a frightening dimension.