FG inaugurates Technical Working Group on Road Safety

By Omeiza Ajayi
ABUJA – The Federal Government has established a capital project development framework to encourage and increase public-private partnerships to deliver critical road projects in the country.

This was contained in a statement issued Thursday in Abuja by the Ministry of Budget and National Planning.

The statement noted that the minister, Sen. Udoma Udo Udoma indicated this while inaugurating the Technical Working Group TWG of the National Road Safety Advisory Council.

“Sen. Udoma told members of the TWG that the meeting provides members an opportunity to get acquainted with the details of their assignment and the roles they are expected to play because clarity on their roles and responsibilities will help promote actualization of the goals and programmes outlined in the Nigeria Road Safety Strategy (NRSS).

“The vision of the NRSS, he explained, was borne out of the desire by relevant stakeholders to stem the menace of road traffic accidents and the consequent loss of lives and destruction of property on our highways.

“The NRSS, he said, is in line with the vision of United Nations Decade of Action for Road Safety: 2011 – 2020 as resolved by United Nations General Assembly in 2010, which is to reduce the rate of road traffic accidents and fatalities by 50% by the year 2020.

“To achieve this goal, member States are required to forge a sustainable platform for a nationally coordinated response involving relevant stakeholders, including government, non-governmental organizations; communities, religious and traditional institutions as well as the Media. It is in fulfillment of this that the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), working closely with the then National Planning Commission and other stakeholders took up the responsibility to articulate the NRSS document in 2010 with elaborate measures to secure active participation and constructive inputs from relevant stakeholders across board”, the statement added.

Also speaking, the Corps Marshall of the Federal Road Safety Commission FRSC, Boboye Oyeyemi, confirmed that for some time now, road safety has become one of the defining issues in public health and economic development globally arising from the considerable degree of injuries victims sustain, lives and property loss, including roads and road infrastructure degradation.

The Corps Marshall said that that even though the country has made huge progress through the steps taken by government to establish the FRSC in 1988, the achievement could have been greater if a national road safety strategy was developed.

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