The Many Crashes On Nigerian Highways…Who Is To Be Blamed?

Most Crashes Are As A Result Of Human And Mechanical Errors As Well As The Deplorable State Of Nigerian Roads — PTD National President
The Incessant Crashes Are Attributable To Drunkenness And Excessive Speeding — NARTO Chief
Federal And State Governments Should Provide And Maintain Good Motorable Roads Across The Country — IPMAN President
The Explosions Are As A Result of Lack of Safety Verve — Corps Marshal

John Pepper Clark, a Nigerian poet, in his popular work, The Casualties, noted that casualties are not only those who lose their lives or property in war, but also those outside the scenes of the ravage and wreck. This work captures the unpleasant fact that once a road crash occurs in the country, it takes a heavy toll on the citizenry.
IT is evident that the rate of road crashes in Nigeria, particularly with articulated vehicles – tankers and trailers – is becoming awful and alarming. The recurring carnage is, often time, occasioned by the recklessness of tanker drivers.

In recent weeks, the spate of fatal traffic crashes around the country such as the ones that occured in Iyana-Ipaja and Idimu areas of Lagos respectively as well as those along the Lagos-Sagamu-Ore-Benin highway, Onitsha-Owerri-Aba, and Abuja-Lokoja highway respectively, are not only terrifying and unacceptable, but also reminders that the rate of carnage on our motorways has quadrupled.

Despite the increasing efforts by government agencies saddled with the responsibility of ensuring that crashes are reduced on our highways and safety principles such as speed limit are strictly adhered to, Nigeria is still rated second globally on road accidents, after Thailand.

The recklessness of truck drivers, even commercial bus (danfo) is commonplace across the country, and Lagos appears to be worst hit as embarking on a drive in some parts of the city like Apapa, the Lagos seaport town via the Mile 2-Mobil-Wharf road is a nightmarish experience that no time-conscious person would want to dare as petroleum tankers and haulage trailers have become lords in this part of the city.

IT is evident that the rate of road crashes in Nigeria, particularly with articulated vehicles – tankers and trailers – is becoming awful and alarming. The recurring carnage is, often time, occasioned by the recklessness of tanker drivers.

For more than five years, the road has been permanently occupied by stationary tanker and haulage trucks waiting to load petroleum products from the tank farms and freight containers from the Tin Can and Apapa Ports or returning freight containers to the ports whose indiscriminate parking has caused unquantifiable loss of man hours and fortunes to our precarious economy and bloodletting on the road.

Also associated with activities of these drivers is the habit of parking their tanker, vehicles on the flyover bridges along the route, which hitherto were designed to bear fleeting and transient weight and not dead weight. Having suffered accelerated depreciation owing to massive vandalisation and non-maintenance of the support utilities like railings and lighting systems, these bridges are already in very precarious states as their structural integrity is in doubt.

It is pertinent to note that parts of the flyover bridges particularly the one at the Liverpool and Berger Yard/Auto Wharf area of the port town are daily deteriorating to unimaginable level. The concrete work of the bridge is disintegrating, leaving the rods embedded in it bare and rust-prone. The continuous occupation of these bridges by high-tonnage vehicles only brings the doomsday closer if nothing is done swiftly to reverse the trend.

The state of most of these trucks raises concern as they are rickety, wobbly, and in a perpetual state of disrepair. More often than not, they possess malfunctioning brakes, and it is a common sight to see the drivers’ assistants (motor boy) armed with wooden wedges that are often used to jolt the carbon-monoxide emitting trucks to a halt, especially on hilly terrains.

The Guardian investigation and careful observation of these vehicles showed that a number of them do not have rear lights, indicator lights, complete head light, C-caution signs and even registration plate number. All known safety and traffic regulations breached by these drivers.

The height of these anomalies is exemplified in the manner the truck drivers convey their consignment with reckless abandon. A number of the container trucks are usually tilted to one end and do not get properly fastened. And cases abound where they send many to untimely a well as painful deaths. Yet, no one single driver or trailer owner has been prosecuted for criminal negligence and gross dereliction of responsibility.

While on the wheel, the drivers of these tankers and trailers often flaunt the larger-than-life character and bully smaller vehicles for right of way. Many among these drivers are usually overwhelmed with alcohol and drugs, and see other road users as rodents that should vacate at the sight of a giant truck.

Also, many are not literate enough to understand basic road signs or communicate effectively; their state of mental well-being is also questionable as they do not undergo psychiatric evaluation to ascertain their state of mental health and alertness given the sensitive nature of their job.

Scene of a road accident on Lagos-Ibadan Expressway early this year

Last Saturday, this reporter witnessed the ugly scenario when he embarked on a road trip to Onitsha, the commercial nerve centre of Anambra State via the Lagos-Sagamu-Ore-Benin highway for his immediate elder brothers’ wedding ceremony. He could not meet up with the event despite leaving Lagos in good time (6am), due to a fire outbreak that occurred at the Ovia River Bridge in Edo State, just few kilometres away to the Benin-city tollgate.

The journey had been smooth until a few minutes’ drive after Okada Wonderland, when it ran into a hectic traffic occasioned by a multiple collusion involving a petroleum tanker that was coming from Benin, a crane brought by the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) to pull out a container truck that had veered off the road into the space that was in-between the bridge, and a gas tanker fully laden with gas and moving inward Benin-City, that occurred and resulted into explosion, burning to ashes three persons (the container driver and two of his assistants) as well as the goods in the container, while a senior FRSC operative was saved by the whiskers by a colleague. Whilst the inferno raged, the Fire Service either from Benin or Okada Wonderland was nowhere in sight.

In Lagos, several interventions have been initiated by the state government to tackle this menace, but to no avail. One of such interventions is the Inter-Ministerial Implementation Committee on Port Approach Roads in Lagos (LAPARC), which comprised men of the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), Nigerian Navy, Nigerian Police and the Nigerian Ports Authority.

Upon its inauguration, the committee immediately, swung into action and respite came the way of motorists, but that effort was short-lived, as the body is currently overwhelmed by the enormity of the problem, and brings to fore the ineptitude of statutory bodies charged with the responsibility of ensuring safety and orderliness on the road.

Many road users and private motorists said the FRSC and the Vehicle Inspection Officers (V.I.O), seem to have lost their purpose and direction, as their checks and controls are largely limited to the use of seat belts and availability of fire extinguishers in vehicles, while pecuniary pursuit in form of exorbitant charges on new vehicle plate numbers and driver’s license as well as vehicle license have become their primary and dominant concern.

They noted that the V.I.O, despite being saddled with responsibility of inspecting vehicles with a view to ascertain its road worthiness, often turn a blind eye to rickety trucks that break down indiscriminately on the roads within the metropolis.

According to them, the Lagos State Traffic Management Agency (LASTMA) has, apart from ensuring the free flow of traffic, been more involved in high level extortion, as officers of the agency, see the flouting of traffic laws by motorists in the state as an opportunity to make money. Rather than impound the bad tanker trucks and trailers, which in recent times have been on killing spree in the state, they get fussy by impounding apparently well-maintained private and official cars.

Also, the M.O.T Test, which was conceptualised by the Lagos State Ministry of Transportation to ensure and entrench the culture of road safety by carrying out necessary tests on vehicles has also not lived up to its billing, as the scheme has been fraught with irregularities, with a good number of claimed road-worthiness certificates possessed by motorists being found to be forged.

The Guardian investigation shows that several factors have been identified to be responsible for increasing road crashes in the country, this include, over speeding and dangerous overtaking by reckless drivers, who are usually induced by impatience, alcohol and sheer bravado.

According to the National Chairman of Petroleum Tanker Drivers (PTD) branch of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG), Comrade Otunba Oladiti, most of the crashes that occur on the Nigerian highways are as a result of human and mechanical errors as well as the deplorable state of the Nigerian roads.

While stressing that night driving should be discouraged, Oladiti noted that over 75 per cent of road accidents involving articulated vehicles occur at night. “As a policy, we always warn our members to stop night driving and we advised that all articulated vehicles should also be disallowed to drive at night.

“It was also discovered that the incessant springing up of markets, both day and night, even at foot and under bridges, as well as along the major road largely results in the high number of casualties recorded in the event of tanker accident,” he said.

For the National President of Nigerian Association of Road Transport Owners (NARTO), Dr. Kassim Ibrahim Bataiya, incessant road crashes on the nation’s highways is attributable to drunkenness and excessive speeding. He suggested that diligent eligibility tests and improved working condition should be put in place to help stem the tide, while urging FRSC and other appropriate authorities to strengthen enforcement drive.

IPMAN President, Chief Obasi Lawson, represented by his Chief of Staff, Mr. Ukadike Chinedu, had in his presentation at the stakeholders’ summit, called on the Federal and state governments to provide and maintain good motorable roads across the country, and the FRSC to establish truck driving schools order to ensure that only professionals were certified to drive the tankers and articulated vehicles in the country.

He said: “IPMAN notes the fatal implications of recent road traffic crashes involving petroleum tankers, trailers and trucks in the country with attendant fire outbreaks, leading to destruction of lives and properties. The adverse implications of such unfortunate incidents to the increasing growth and development of the country; if such incidents are not curtailed, the nation’s road and the haulage business will be adversely affected.”

As part of the commitment and new development, the FRSC and NUPENG have agreed to restrain movement of petroleum tanker drivers without the speed limiters or reflective tapes from September 1, 2015. The FRSC Corp Marshall, Mr. Boboye Oyeyemi, equally warned haulage operators that no unstrapped container would be allowed to leave the ports henceforth.

According to Oyeyemi, the FRSC would also collaborate with the Vehicle Inspection Office to ensure adequate capacity development training among officers, adding that the training would enable efficiency to appropriately check vehicles for faulty parts including tyres to reduce the frequency of deaths, accidents and damages on the highways.

Speaking on air recently, the Corp Marshal said: “I’m happy and I must commend the tanker drivers; we could see the trend at the beginning of the year when we started engaging them. If we don’t engage them, we won’t get to this level.”

While x-raying how the problem got to this level, he added, “We have so many vehicles on the road, and the intermodal system is not working. 90 percent of our transport system is on the road and there is so much pressure, coupled with the conditions of the roads. For example, we have 35,000 tanker trucks in Nigeria based on the data made available to us, and 200 tankers or trailers laden with goods can easily be lifted by the rail through coaches or making the pipelines to work more, which the government is trying to address now. So, because of the failures of these two and the Inland Waterways, there is so much pressure on the road.”

He noted that majority of the tankers and trailers are over 30 years of age, only the multi-nationals can afford to procure new ones and they are very few, because one truck cost about N30 million, stressing that most of the independent tanker owners cannot afford it, and some of them have confessed that even if they have such much money they will not buy new trailer because of the purchasing power, and this has made the pressure to become much.

“As a result of these responsibilities, there is need for diversification and redistribution of traffic system; let the roads be more functioning, which the government is commendable for making sure they are ongoing. Again, if the pipelines are fixed and petroleum products are moved through them, the pressure would reduce. In Lagos, we have about 54 tank farms all clustered around Apapa, and it is even a big risk,” he said.

He added, “we have all agreed and there is no going back; we are not going to compromise on the minimum safety standards for drivers, particularly the tanker and trailer drivers. So far, we have made tremendous progress. We had a summit on June 14, and the four-point agenda/plan of action was signed by all. As at our last meeting, we have commenced the implementation; we are going to retrain all the tanker drivers, and they have agreed to bear the costs.

“The minimum safety standard has been endorsed by tankers drivers, and they have agreed to full compliance with the speed limit, the little light reflectors and the minimum safety standard by September 1, 2015. The question we need to ask is when there is a crash involving trailers and tankers, why do they spill their products. The problem is that the safety verves in these vehicles are missing. Even in the developed countries trailers do crash, but they don’t spill their products because the safety verves are intact.

“As result of this, we have engaged the Standard Organisation of Nigeria, and they have released the guidelines, which are not new to us, but the failures of the manufacturers, by this I mean those who are constructing the tanks and the trailers, to comply with the minimum safety standards have been responsible for this and that is why if there is crash, the tankers spill their products.”

“We have now deployed our safety officers to the depots, and if there is any tanker truck that doesn’t have the safety verve, it will not be allowed to load. We are determined to follow the checklist of the minimum safety standard and any vehicle that falls short of this would not be allowed on the road.