The Federal Road Safety Corps, FRSC, has revealed that road transport accounts for 90 per cent of national transportation needs in Nigeria.
According to the FRSC Corps Marshal Dr Boboye Oyeyemi, there were about 12 million registered vehicles plying 204,000km of the roads in the country, The Nation reports.
He said passengers and vehicles travelled data collated from major terminals in the country. More road users, he noted, used the motor parks last year.
Oyeyemi, who quoted the 2010 Draft National Policy on Transport, Oyeyemi said road network increased. He said there were 6,500 km in 1960, 10,000 km in 1970, 29,000 km in 1980 and 204,000 km in recent years.
He said local government roads account for the large chunk of roads in the country.
He listed the length of total road network by government ownership as include 34,120km for Federal roads, 34,300km – state roads and about 135,580km for local government roads.
The federal roads, he said, are mostly inter-state roads with high traffic density. He expressed dissatisfaction that of the 204,000 km of roads in the country, about 65 per cent are still in bad condition.
He restated the need for repairs and reconstruction of roads, stressing that the construction of new ones would go a long in ameliorating the suffering of the road users.
In addressing the road safety challenge, Oyeyemi said successive governments devised measures to address the road safety problem over time.
These are not limited to the Nigerian Army Road Safety Week, after the Civil War in 1972, establishment of National Road Safety Commission (NRSC) – 1974, establishment of Oyo State Road Safety Corps-1977, and establishment of other state road safety institutions in the late ‘70s, such as Anambra State establishment of Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) on February 18, 1988, state traffic management Agencies—like Lagos State Traffic Management Authority (LASTMA), Ogun State Traffic Compliance And Enforcement Corps (TRACE), among others.
With all these measures, the FRSC boss said there had been reduction in road crashes.Oyeyemi noted that the gap could be further reduced through concerted efforts of stakeholders.
