The Federal Road Safety Corp has decorated 79 of its officers with ranks and charged them to put in more efforts towards reducing road crashes in the state.
The Zonal Commanding Officer of the FRSC, Zone 12, Assistant Corps Marshall, Imoh Etuk, who decorated the officers yesterday at the Zonal office in Bauchi, said the call was necessary in view of the high cases of accidents in the state in the past few months.
He attributed these accidents to night travels by motorists saying that if drivers heed to the advice not to travel at night, most crashes would not occur advising that proper journey management should be done to avoid nights travels.
He said that the FRSC was worried about the crashes, pointing out that aggressive campaign was being done to reduce these crashes to the barest minimum.
Etuk said: “Along the Bauchi axis, the high rates of accidents is as a result of night travels, although people have the fundamental human rights to travel at any time of the day, but we are urging them that night travels should be restricted because of the obvious risks.
“You cannot compare the rescue of the daytime and the night because of the nature of ours roads, the security challenges and the most important thing that these drivers are always fatigued when the drive at night. We urge them to do proper journey management so that they don’t have to travel at night.
“The Corp generally is worried and we are doing more public enlightenment, more education and we are ensuring that our men are deployed to traffic calming,” he said.
He warned the FRSC officers and men to desist from extorting members of the public saying that “there is no organisation that does not have bad eggs and we have our internal mechanisms to deal with those bad eggs and we’ll keep dealing with them.”
The FRSC boss urged members of the public that “they should not offer any form of gratification to any of our men because they are not supposed to collect bribes. And it’s a two way traffic, both the giver and the receiver are guilty, so both of them will be prosecuted.”
He said that the Corp would not rest on its oars but would ensure that underage drivers were rid of the highways through the enforcement of driver’s license.
According to him: “We will continue to ensure that we do the enforcement do that only licensed drivers from the age of 18 and above are the ones driving on our highways and those using fake licences, we know what to do with them.”
He charged motorists to drive carefully especially during the harmattan and to ensure that their vehicles are in good conditions before embarking on any journey “don’t involve yourself is speeding or drug related offences.”
Etuk said that the 2018 promotion of the Officers was based on merit pointing out that “they are being rewarded for their excellence and their commitment to duty. We acknowledge that even though promotion is from God, these people have been selfless and hardworking over the years.”
He added that: “We are rewarding them for greater dedication, greater hard work and greater commitment to the ideals of the corps, to ensure that the Corp’s corporate objective are fulfilled from time to time. It is an honour for them, for their families and even for the corps for rewarding excellence.
We rejoice them and urge them to be greater patriots to rededicate themselves to the issue of safety because it is a collective responsibility to the ranks, the higher ranks, that impetus to ensure that all is well on our highways. For those who did not benefit, they should try harder this year and they will be promoted.”
