Fashola Blames Speed Violation for Incessant Road Accidents

The Minister of Works and Housing, Mr Babatunde Fashola (SAN) has said speed violations, rather than bad roads are to blame for incessant road crashes in the country, stressing that it accounts for 32.8 per cent of all cases.

Speaking at a virtual seminar in commemoration of his 58 birthday, Fashola insisted that while bad roads contribute just 1.3 per cent, other human factors, such as speed violations, loss of control, sign light violation, dangerous driving, wrongful overtaking, among others, make up 87 per cent of all road crashes across the country.

According to him, in January, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) recorded the highest number of road crashes, roughly 106, with 17 people killed, while Kogi State had 67 road crashes with 60 deaths, with Lagos having the highest number of booked offenders. “The default narrative is always that the road is bad. This is not the truth. We have said this narrative for an entire generation. Perhaps, if we had earlier than now focused on what was the major cause, we may not have the numbers that we see.

“Although bad roads contribute, according to the figures, in January 2021, 691 lives were lost. That is a lot of lives that have been lost in one month. The people who died as a result of road crashes in January were more than those we lost to COVID-19 and to malaria combined.

“We need to pay more attention to something that kills more than malaria and COVID-19 combined. While we are chasing malaria and COVID-19 as we should, the silent killer is going away very undetected,” he said.

In his contribution, Corps Marshal of the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) Mr. Boboye Oyeyemi revealed that 2,233 Nigerians lost their lives to road crashes in the first four months of the year.

Themed “Building a Road Towards Better Driving Culture’’, he said the death toll came from 4,459 accidents involving 28,826 persons, adding that the figures, from January to April, indicated that 691 died in January, 497 in February, 480 in March and 565 in April.

Like Fashola, he identified overspeeding as the major cause of accidents in Nigeria, arguing that the number of aged cars on the country’s roads was disturbing.

“The way we are experiencing road crashes that resulted in fatalities is alarming while the absence of toll plazas has made enforcement to be a bit difficult. When there are toll plazas, we will be able to track those speeding above the speed limit,” he said.