FRSC, Use of Phone and Surveillance

On Saturday, August 18, 2018, I set out on a drive to Grand Square in the Central Business District of Abuja for shopping. I drove past the front of Sky Memorial Plaza that shares a fence with the national headquarters of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Wuse Zone 5, which is a stone’s throw from Ibro Hotel; and, no sooner had I made a detour into Accra Street, immediately after Ibro Hotel, than a Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) Toyota Hilux van, overtook and blocked my vehicle.

One of the officers jumped out of the vehicle, came to me and asked if I knew why they blocked my vehicle. I replied I had no idea. To my uttermost shock, he said they saw me use my phone while driving. According to him, the five-man team was in its vehicle close to Sky Memorial when one of the members alerted it to the fact that I was using my phone while driving. Interestingly, the team relied on the judgment of one of its members to give me a hot chase. While still talking, one of the officers moved to the passenger’s side, opened the door and sat down. The leader of the team, an equivalent of an unconfirmed ASP in the Police, demanded my vehicle particulars which I handed over to him. He jumped into the waiting vehicle and drove off with the other members of his team. The officer sitting in my car said I should drive to the FRSC office in Wuse Zone 7. It was at that point I insisted that I was neither making nor answering a call on the steering wheel.

In fact, at the point I was blocked, my two phones were on the passenger’s seat. The officer clarified that it was true that I was not making a call on the phone but that I was holding a phone in my hand. I was pleasantly surprised by that claim too as I could not even remember holding my phone in my hand. I could not have conveniently held the steering wheel with a phone in my hand. If I was not making a call as confirmed by him, why should I hold a phone in my hand that would make it somewhat difficult for me to steer the wheel of the car?

Assuming without conceding that I held a phone in my hand, without using it for a call or a chat or anything whatsoever, the FRSC officials insisted that the action would still have constituted an offence of “use of phone.” The FRSC could be correct in their wider interpretation of use of phone, that is going beyond making calls on the steering wheel, but I got into a heated argument with the officer who sat in my car, demanding evidence to prove my culpability- that I actually held the phone at the point one of the officers claimed to have seen me.

Alas, there was no evidence! It was just his or the team’s words against mine. The officer admitted there were no CCTV cameras that could have been called upon to show I committed the offence. While the argument was on, the other members of the FRSC reversed the vehicle to where my vehicle was parked and the team leader came out to reinforce the position of his subordinate. Funnily enough, as he was explaining to me the “use of phone”, I noticed that one of them was using his android phone to record the conversation I was having with the team leader. I said funnily enough because he was trying to get post-hoc evidence from statements made by me in the course of the conversation that could be used to prove my admission of the team’s claim of use of phone by me. It was unimaginable that a refined and intellectually-primed corps could resort to that kind of antics to prove an offence was committed by a citizen. I actually wondered how it had wanted to use my words that, “as a matter of fact I never knew merely holding a phone while driving is an offence” as an admission that I actually held a phone.

Sufuyan Ojeifo, Abuja