....These Deaths Too Many...These Articulated Lorries Must Be Stopped...
As Ambode, the Governor of Lagos State distributed monies to the Iyana Ipaja and Idimu petrol tanker accident victims, we are compelled to ask, compensation or reform...????
Just as we are asking the question, another family of three perished due to the recklessness of a driver of a trailer who overturned and fell on the family car and perish three persons, father, mother and baby son yesterday afternoon.
As much as I do commend the governor of Lagos State, Akinwunmi Ambode for providing N100,000 each for the fire victims at Idimu and Iyana Ipaja, 167 victims in total, I believe the Lagos State government should simultaneously engage the presidency in the reform process that will not only prevent this ugly situation from occurring but should restore victims of future accident to a position better than the stipend so given to these victims.
If you were to go through the speech lines of the deputy governor who stood in for the governor, you will appreciate why the reform, holistic reform is all that may be needed now!!!
The lines of the governor speech as captured in the news during the presentation of the cheques was as follows:
"...this gesture was in fulfillment of the promises i made when the incidents occurred.
...My administration which takes welfare of the citizens seriously, deemed it fit to empower the victims to enable them return to their normal lives.
....Though the amount is not equivalent to your respective losses, the gesture is a palliative measure to cushion the losses,”
...THE GOVERNOR CONFIRMS THE OBVIOUS...
Mr. Ambode confirms the obvious at the presentation of the cheques to those 167 fire victims by saying that the compensation so given to each of them was not a reflection and neither was it representative of the massive losses so incurred but a mere palliative gesture.
Sir, I believe we must move beyond palliative NOW and begin to talk about the real change!!!!
The question that follows is, if the compensation was palliative, how do we drive the solution that would hit the bottom of any future losses and secondly, how do we prevent or reduce the possibility of these kinds of accidents re-occuring again?
...THE PROACTIVE SOLUTIONS, ALTERNATIVE TO PEANUTS AND HANDOUTS, PALLIATIVES...
These tanker and other articulated lorry accidents are as a result of man made problems which if properly addressed could be reduced or eliminated.
For instance, the Idimu tanker accident was as a result of some miscreants, area boys' struggling with the tanker's driver to give them 'owo omo onile' which consequently led to the preventable accident.
But in the whole, generic approach, holistic solutions and discourse around this issue should be articulated and advanced, hence the piece.
I strongly believe that, until such a time the politicians and policy makers wake up to the realisation that to provide governance is to provide permanent solutions to our challenges, all the shenanigans that we daily wake up to as citizens will not leave us...
There must be conscious efforts and concrete steps towards provision of real solutions.
The contestation between survival of innocent Nigerians and the articulated lorries is a function of how best to providing the real solutions and to my mind, the Lagos State government and by extension the government at the centre must as a matter of urgency looked at the areas so analysed below to providing real solution:
- Insurance: auto insurance must be a must for all autos on our roads and the basis of enforcement of this rule should be taken away from the manual processes of detecting offenders. The insurance companies could bridge the gap by funding a system that will deliver a computer based equipment which would be provided for the traffic enforcement agencies to deliver on the enforcement, hence removing the likely corruption that enforcement may bring along it.
- Other insurance policies that may be important is the home and contents insurance for all Nigerians.
- Petroleum tankers must be provided with safety valve which is of international standard.
Accidents occur in the EU as well as the US, involving the petroleum tankers but the possibility of the spills are very remote because the inflammable contents are well secured.
The locally fabricated tankers must be inspected and licensed with the responsibility of sanctions placed on the licencing authorities if it turns out that a tanker failed the standard test in the case of accidents or spot inspections by another inspectorate division.
Each lorry must be marked by the inspectorate department that accessed and pass it to function, hence responsibility could be narrowed to individuals involved in the process.
In fact, a computer based equipment must be provided to all enforcement agencies on the highways who stop and inspect these articulated lorries and the information stored so that audit could be made when accidents occur.
- Road infrastructures: our roads are bad and in many cases, they do contribute to accidents. The case of Iyana Ipaja was that of narrow and potty road. In this instance situation, it would be imperative for the government involved to fully pay compensation to all those victims involved which takes us back to the issue of government taking insurance covers as well as individual citizens.
- Rail infrastructure: the cheapest and quickest way to move containerised contents is through rail and the government must as a matter of urgency develop a national rail policy driven by private enterprise. The massive transfer of transportation of fuel and other containerised goods over rail will lead to reduction of articulated lorries on our roads and the question of multiple accidents would be reduced. This investment needs multi-billion dollar but a presidency that is proactive could structure the investments driven by the private sector in a way that all investments in this area would be leverage, thus encouraging greater investments.
- Modular refineries: the federal government must embark upon the policy of encouraging modular refineries. The encouragement provided to Dangote Group of Companies to come up with 650,000bpd super large refinery isn't good for the economy. It isn't only because we shall be creating another monopoly but because we will still look at the issue of transporting these products across the federation at high costs, and the transportation of such highly inflammable goods will still have the question of health & safety hanging on its neck.
- Pipelines: the transportation of crude oil derivatives are best transported with the least costs through piping(pipe-lines). The only challenge mitigating against this methodology is the question of pipeline vandalisation and theft which is more of police and policing.
The question we should then ask is, how much do we loose through pipeline vandalisation? It was assume we lose in an averaage year $1billion.
If the above was true, the question thus is, wouldn't it be wise for the pipeline owners to commit into the security arrangement for the pipeline at least N200billion annually to improve on surveillances and pipelines protection?
I think such thinking is very logical and should form part of our discourse. N200billion annually could add nothing less than 300,000 police to thee beat!!!
- Miscreants(Agbero boys/girls). It was asserted that the Idimu fire accident involving the petrol tanker was caused by the 'agberos' demanding money from the driver and struggling with him which led to the loss of wheel control and the eventual accidents. The question of checking these social eye sours across the south-west of Nigeria specifically must be designed. These guys who the state has failed are now becoming an albatross on our necks and we must come up with a policy of change to rehabilitate these socio-economic disadvantaged people.
- Licencing: it was asserted that, the articulated lorry drivers licences issued are thirty-six thousands, 36,000.
If that number was right, then I will like to believe that managing such numbers shouldn't be rocket science.
There must be a revisit to the characters issued these licences before now and the need to re-licence them all over again without the contestation demand of new monies from them...
These licensees are not many, hence the need to be proactive in monitoring them become imperative.
For instance, hand-held computer for the enforcement agents should be procured and licence details must be populated in a database where licensee details could be verified whilst spot checks are conducted!!!
In order to avoid bribery and compromising the stop and demand for licence scheme, it must be mandatory that all licence computer-held machines provided must be biometric readable and once swipe through the machine, the validity must come up.
The process of issuing this licences must be thorough. Psychiatric test must be compulsory and such would not just be dealt with kid gloves.
The psychiatric centres to be used must have dedicated link to the offices of the FRSC and other licencing authorities database stating in clear terms the test reports on each of the drivers. This is to avoid scrupulous issue of fake psychiatric reports.
It must also be stated as part of the warning to the doctors issuing the reports that a flawed report on any driver would be verified by another psychiatric centre, hence the need to be thorough.
If psychiatric patients are eliminated from the articulated lorry sector, we may be able to avoid accidents which result from such fault.
Having passed the psychiatric tests, the driver would be seconded to have real time driving test for the articulated lorry driving.
The government must invest through a PPP scheme for such licencing body to emerge.
Using VIO, FRSC would defeat the purpose and I would advise the government to empower private sector, one per regional bloc as text centres for noon-compromised testing.
The licencing test having been conducted by these bodies would thus be transferred online real time to the licence issuing government agency.
Once the issuing process is transparent and demanding, the process is more likely to weed out the undesirable elements out and bring about real professionalism thus making the sector drivers to earn more than what they earn now and be respected.
• MOT: FRSC alluded to the fact that only 10% of the 34,000 articulated lorries in Nigeria are less than 30years. All others are over 30years and may not be road worthy.
This assertion is damning of this sector. We cannot allow death traps to occupy our transportation landscape thus leading to untimely death, loss of property and damage to our environment.
Strict MOT certification methodology must be put in place to get rid of these rickety, moving killers off our roads.
Yes, Nigerians factors may kick in whereby the certification centres may turn centres to money making machines, which the employees would surely do.
To guard against such occurrence, the modern day MOT machines should be invested in whereby a truck will drive into the auto-hall and the checks are automatically carried out and certificate issued without human handling(this is happening in the present time in the UK, so no one should tell me it wasn't possible.)
By the time we have a licenced articulated lorry driver and MOT certificate on the road which the hand-held computers of the enforcement agencies could verify, Nigerians would be rest assured that accidents and the causes are less likely to happen due to the mental state of the drivers, or through the road worthiness of the lorries.
The traffic enforcement agencies: these agencies have been turned into money spinning machines by those staff and we must able to bring in the change-agent that will change the course of corruption in this sector for good.
Nigerians must be able to have a licence system that is non-compromise which we can own and which international community should own as well.
The manual inspection by police, VIO, FRSC etc must be totally discouraged.
All inspections of documents must be effected by computer held machines and where stop and demand for documentation are stationed, there must be mobile magistrate courts to dispensed with the case of breach and at least a barrister to represent the interest of the accused must be present.
We should demand that stop and demand for documentation should not be carried out without mobile magistrate and computer held computer machines.
Financing: We have been told that 10% of the 34,000 lorries are road worthy. So, what we have is a situation whereby more than 25,000 lorries who ply the road are not road worthy.
No lorry owner would like to operate unworthy vehicles but the cost of acquiring a trunk head estimated at near N30million is out of reach for the average lorry driver, hence something must be done and quickly.
One thing is clear, financing purchases of these lorries and using those lorries as collateral is the only way out of helping not to compromise the system.
Most of these lorry owners would be willing to get off the roads these killer lorries given the opportunity, hence we must be willing as a nation to leverage them to acquiring these lorries.
CONCLUSION:
All the suggestions so articulated above are beyond the state government to deliver because they should form part of our national road safety processes and that was why I opened the piece by commending the governor for his large heart but I believe he could advance the demand for sanity world by not only stopping at the largesse but teaming up with other state governors to demanding for real change that we need so that these daily deadly occurrences would be a thing of the past.
The time has come to demand for change, at least the mantra is all about change!!!!
- Seyi Odetola
