At a seminar in Lagos, Special Marshals of the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) left none in doubt of their readiness for the challenges of road safety in modern times, writes ADEYINKA ADERIBIGBE
Former Minister of Defence and pioneer Corps Marshal of the Federal Roads Safety Corps Dr. Olu Agunloye set the tone, last Thursday, for the needed retooling of the Special Marshal – the volunteer arm of the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC).
Though he called himself a “jobless old man,” Agunloye was on hand to chart the way forward, for the continued relevance of the Marshals in the age of technology, at a one day seminar held at the The Fountain of Life Church, Ilupeju Industrial Estate, Lagos.
Though his public life spanned being a Corps Marshal, A Special Assistant to the then Minister for Power and later Attorney General and Minister for Justice for the Federation, the late Chief Bola Ige, (to whom, he said, he acted as the hard drive while in office).
Agunloye, who later became the Minister for Power and Steel, and for Defence, left no one in doubt he was resolutely and irrevocably committed to road safety.
So concerned was he that, according to him, he always called the Sector Commanders of Oyo and Lagos daily to find out why nothing seems to be working and why strategies aimed at ensuring smooth traffic flow in the Southwest’s biggest urban centres seemed to have collapsed.
“I do not know why the FRSC, especially the men in blue (Special Marshals) will not let a jobless and retired man like me rest; he told a hall filled with Special Marshals, who invited him to dissect the volunteer corps at a seminar.
Speaking on the theme: “Special Marshal: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow”, Agunloye said the corps’ assignment could be simpler if the messages of road safety were driven through the primary and secondary school curricula. When road safety is taught to children of school age and the awareness grows through their formative ages, they grow to know what to do on the road long before they begin to hold a car key or attempt to be on the road.
He opined that if the right strategies were implemented, it would trigger a new crop of matured drivers who would not only be responsible, but respect the right of others on the road.
He said: ”Researches have shown that people who tend to know about road safety long before they had the opportunity of acquiring driver’s licences, or sitting behind the wheel of a vehicle, drive better and are more conscious of the rights of other road users.”
According to him, children are great influencers and many are known to have influenced the right attitude by their parents in the use of seat belts, putting a stop to the use of phones while driving, eating on the wheel, drunk driving and other dangerous habits that cause accidents.
”Some children have had to complain about such things as use of seat belts, eating on the wheel and use of telephones picked from road safety clubs in their schools. As a result, they save their families from avoidable disaster,” he said.
Agunloye, said the path to the establishment of road safety began with the Nigerian Army, who in the 70s started a monthly awareness on road safety to train soldiers whose recklessness on the roads had become legendary.
By 1978, the situation was so bad that upon ceaseless agitations from academics from the then University of Ife, the old Oyo State Government, under the late Chief Bola Ige, established the Oyo State Road Safety Corps, headed by Prof. Wole Soyinka, and from where the Federal Government took a cue to establish the FRSC.
Agunloye opined that the FRSC started as a team of volunteers, made up at the formative years of academia from the University of Ife and later Ibadan, in response to the need to protect the lives of their students who are usually killed by reckless drivers. The Special Marshal, he said, is as old as the regular marshal and was the driver of the process that has given the Corps the laudable image it now enjoys as the leading and most responsive and responsible agency of the government.
“The special marshals have emerged as a very important segment of the road safety chain and their activities have gone a long way in giving the regular corps the kind of image it presently enjoys not only locally, where it has been adjudged as the best performing agency, but even globally, where the United Nations had recommended all nations of the earth to have a dedicated agency for road safety in a global effort to reduce road carnage.”
For the Special Marshal to continue to be relevant into the future, Agunloye said, it must continue to evolve and embrace new paradigms such as an inclusive Public Private Partnership (PPP), where it opens up to the participation of more members of the public, i.e. the masses or grassroots (as against government), and the organised private sector in taking road safety messages to the nooks and crannies.
Such leveraging according to him “would assure more efficiency of the special marshals, and the effectiveness of the road safety messages, ensure larger reach and coverage of the marshals who are largely volunteers, increase access to private funding to augment lean allocations, improve increased buy-in of members of the community, and ensure the preservation of the corps’ integrity.”
Agunloye urged all special marshals to continue to deploy their time and talents to the common good adding that their contributions have all contributed to making the roads safer for all users.
Flagging off the seminar, the Lagos State Commissioner for Transportation, Dr. Frederic Oladeinde. urged the FRSC and the Special Marshal cadre, to embrace and deploy technology in keeping the roads safe for all users.
Oladeinde said the state government was grateful to the special marshals who have continued to make the roads free and safe. He said the work could be made less cumbersome if they deployed technology.
He said the FRSC would continue to be a major partner of the state government in ensuring the safety of roads in line with the THEMES agenda which rests primarily on transportation and traffic management.
The FRSC Sector Commander, Hyginus Chukwu Omeje, lauded the special marshals for ”making the job of policing the roads easier for the “regular ones.”
He said the theme of the seminar, held to rejig the corps, was apt, adding that the choice of the Agunloye who, alongside the Soyinka, midwifed the corps was not misplaced. He said Agunloye laid the template for the three layers structure of the corps – the regular, the volunteer corps, and the road ambassadors who form part of the Road Safety Clubs in schools, all of which have continued to work perfectly for the corps to ensure safety.
The FRSC Zonal Coordinator in charge of Zone 2, ACM Samuel Obayemi, said the corps would always partner with the special marshals who he described as critical to its successes in keeping the roads safe of accidents and impediments.
The National Coordinator, Dr Sink Tutsi Kwabe, thanked the Lagos zone for always leading the pack.
Kwabe, who is the fifth National Coordinator, said from its humble beginning, the Special Marshal is 15,000 men strong adding that the seminar calls for a sober reflection with a view to charting the way forward for its continued relevance in the road and transportation sector.
‘Research have shown that people who tend to know about road safety long before they had the opportunity of acquiring driver’s licenses, or sitting behind the wheel of a vehicle, drive better and are more conscious of the rights of other road users’
Kwabe said the goals of the special marshal will continue to be the promotion of road safety awareness, even as he acknowledged the enormous challenges besetting road safety.
Earlier, the state coordinator Mr Olusola Olojede, said the theme of the workshop is to arm all special marshals with what need to be done to make them more relevant in road safety management in the future.
He said the state which presently has 1,500 volunteer special marshals is looking forward to recruiting more hands in its attempt to take the message of road safety to all crannies of the state.
The highlight of the event were the presentation of awards of excellence to past state coordinators — Chief Joju Fadairo, Chief Austine Nchuchukwe, Aare Bisi Lawal, Prince FAB Adenekan, Alhaji Toyin Kadiku and Pastor George B. Benson.
Also presented with awards were Kwabe and Omeje.
The Lagos Sector 2.1 special marshal also unveiled two projects – stickers – which, according to Olojede, were to address the psychology of the typical driver to respect road users.
He said the stickers to be distributed at bus garages by the special marshal unit and zonal coordinators would help to change the mindset of drivers.
”By affixing the I pledge to respect other road users’ stickers on the bumpers of your car, you are making a commitment to join hands with others to make the road safer for all, thereby reducing carnage on our roads,” Olojede said.