The Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, has sounded alarms on the increased number of road traffic crashes on federal highways, not caused by bad roads.
At the end of the FEC meeting in Abuja, Fashola said that the Lagos-Ibadan Highway, the Abuja-Kano Highway, and Abuja-Keffi-Lafia Highway, have the highest cumulative number of road accidents, saying that for the month of January 2021, more people died of road accidents than COVID-19 and malaria put together.
Fashola said: “So, we saw that this was something that needed to be focused on. We saw that for the month of January, the number of people who died from the road crashes exceeded the combined numbers of people who died from malaria and COVID together for the same month.
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“While COVID and malaria were receiving national attention, perhaps it was necessary to bring this to the attention of government, as part of our strategy for protecting life and property.
“So, we identified the need for various actions to be taken from the municipal, local government level to state and national level.”
He said that the process is on to reduce road accidents on the federal highways, including the installation of road traffic signs and more patrol.
He added: “We are looking at also putting speed metres on the highway.
“There is a combination of factors and we are also trying to educate drivers as we saw that the biggest factor for these accidents to include overspeeding, loss of control, wrongful overtaking, brake failure, tyre blow-out 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%. As big as that may be, it is less than 2%.
“These factors I have mentioned; over speeding, loss of control, wrongful overtaking cumulate to over 70%. If we reduce this, we will bring the numbers down.”
Edited by Tunde Orebiyi
