Speaking with The Guardian in Lagos, Oyedokun explained that, the attitude of employers of drivers towards capacity building of this category of workforce is nothing to write home about.

Oyedokun said: “The attitude of employers of drivers towards capacity building of this category of workforce is nothing to write home about. To most employers, drivers are not responsible, drivers are difficult to handle, and drivers are recalcitrant and so on. They fail to recognize the potency of capacity building in achieving a disciplined, competent, well-motivated and responsible set of drivers. It has been proven that organizing ordinary driver training exercises regularly will reduce road traffic crashes attributable to human errors to between 30 to 70 per cent. Investing in driver training and retraining is a very good step towards protection of lives and properties.”
 
He revealed that the Lagos state drivers’ Institute was born out of the respond of the state government to end recklessness on the highway. “There are so many people having drivers’ licenses that never went through any formal training before they started driving. Driving is a technology and as such it has techniques but most people with drivers ‘licenses received training from their peers or family members,” Oyedokun added.
 
According to him, bankers, teachers, lawyers and other professionals have where they add to their knowledge that is the same function that the Lagos drivers’ institute perform.

He urged employers to treat drivers like other employees, by providing improved welfare conditions, boost morale and productivity.

He said: “These with other factors such as responsible number of driving hours, good condition of service, regular training and retraining, rewards and recognitions will improve safety performance and better productivity of drivers within an organization.

Oyedokun said: “Our data in Nigeria is not enviable at all, we are one of the worst countries in terms of road traffic crashes, it means that what we have been doing have not improved our status”

He noted that safety issues should not be treated as a reactive approach; “we need holistic method using all agencies to plan and execute. You need car owners, town planners, the drivers, political officeholders and medical experts among others. There must be safety audit particularly in all construction projects across the country. People must be made to pay for certain lapses”, Oyedokun stated.

He said: “It is not the number of the enforcement officers on the street that brings law enforcement; most traffic management issues are done at the background. Things are supposed to be done the way the world is going now. We should work towards a level whereby we can check speed and when you check speed you don’t necessarily need to stop a vehicle or the driver to contact the owner. The nation by now should be able to have technology to check speed level or alcohol level by randomly caring out test and punish drivers.

“We need to have interactive road signs on the highways; drivers don’t respects road signs because our road signs are misleading. For instance, when you are travelling, you see ‘slow down men at work’ but when you get to the location, there are no men at work. The work was completed four  months ago,” he added.
 
Speaking about the recent decision by President Muhamadu Buhari to obey traffic rules and regulations, Oyedokun noted that the decision remained a heart-warming step to ensuring safety of lives and properties on highways across the country.

He said: “This is coming from a backdrop of the fact that political interference has been a major challenge to road safety practice in Nigeria.  It is the job of our leaders, politicians and legislators to create the context and awareness to move Nigeria from the present status of being the second most dangerous country in the world to one of the best in terms of safety of lives and properties in the Highway Transportation System”.

He stated further that the directive is a call for security agencies to step up Intelligence gathering, efficient policing of black spots on the highways, stressing that the directive would also ginger related agencies to ensure prompt removal of obstacles on Nigerian highways, provide real time information about conditions of the highways, ensure efficient traffic control, carry out effective monitoring and control of traffic signal lights, prevent road side and ‘inside’ traffic trading, hawking among other things.