Professor Oserheimen Osunbor

The Nigerian Law Reform Commission has proposed amendments to the Federal Road Safety Commission (Establishment) Act in order to reduce accidents on the roads across the country.

Chairman of the commission, Professor Oserheimen Osunbor, who announced proposals for reforming the FRSC, noted that rivalry among agencies and overlapping functions were making the task of stopping accidents on the roads very difficult.

He noted that FRSC faced conflict with organisations like the Nigeria Police Force, the Directorate of Road Traffic Services, and Vehicle Inspector Officers (VIOs) among others.

Osunbor stated that the management of drivers’ licence remained a major challenge in the country.

According to him, by law, FRSC is empowered to produce drivers’ licence, while VIOs are to issue drivers with the licence.

He said: “This legal arrangement makes the management of drivers licence rather untidy. The result is that many drivers hold forged and invalid drivers’ licences, with multiple issuances from different states.”

Osunbor said there was a need to give FRSC the power to introduce and issue operator’s licence as well as the need to centralise  the production of drivers licence in the country.

The Corps Marshal of the FRSC, Mr. Boboye Oyeyemi, said that to reduce road traffic crash fatalities by half, areas of conflicts among agencies and overlapping duties must be removed.

While calling for a total overhaul of the existing legal frameworks in road traffic administration and safety management in Nigeria, he said: “It is a multiple legislation with respect to road traffic, which has brought about conflict of laws and overlapping of functions between agencies saddled with the responsibilities of implementing these laws.”

According to him, the conflicts sometimes lead to operational frictions and open confrontations between the concerned agencies. This he said hinders effective and efficient road traffic management.

He therefore called for the harmonisation of all traffic laws into one single agency implementing and enforcing the harmonised laws.

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