The Nation Newspaper

Tag: recklessness

  • Motorists cautioned against recklessness during ember month

    The Managing Director of the Lekki Concession Company (LCC) Mr. Mubashiru Hassan, has advised motorists plying the Eti-osa, Lekki Epe expressway to avoid reckless driving on the expressway especially during the ember months of the year.

    Hassan gave the advice while speaking on the preparations of the company to reinforce security patrol on the expressway during the last quarter of the year.

    He said the LCC dedicated joint security patrol team of the police, Lagos State Traffic Management Agency (LASTMA) Man-O-War and other Traffic Management agencies have been placed on joint security surveillance to protect lives and property on the expressway during the last months of the year.

    “We decided to take these steps to avoid loss of lives and properties on our expressway knowing how reckless and restless our motorists, most especially commercial drivers are on the roads towards the end of the year in order to make more money. Our security patrol teams are well kitted and mobilised with all security surveillance equipment to ensure strict adherence to traffic rules by motorists on the expressway. Any motorists found wanting  shall be prosecuted accordingly. I advise all motorists plying the expressway to drive carefully, responsibly and avoid drinking alcohol while on the wheels”. He said.

    Meanwhile, not less than 29 persons including motorists and motorcycle operators popularly known as okada riders,  have been arrested by the combined security patrol team of the company for various traffic offences on the Eti-Osa Lekki Epe Expressway within the last one month.

    According to the Chief Security Officer (CSO) of the company Mr. Solomon Tolofari most of the arrested persons have been prosecuted at the Ikoyi Special Offences Magistrate Court while some were still pending in the law court.

  • Executive recklessness

    •Supreme Court rules to save democracy at the local level as it outlaws appointment of caretaker committees to run LGs

    The decision by the highest court of the land, the Supreme Court, that appointment of caretaker committees in place of elected officials for local governments is illegal and amounts to “executive lawlessness” is welcome. It is a fitting intervention by the judiciary in the age-long struggle to save democratic ethos, values and practice. Ruling on the suit filed by the 16 local government officials sacked by the Kayode Fayemi administration when it was inaugurated in Ekiti State in 2010, the apex court frowned at governors’ penchant to disregard the constitutional guidelines for administering their states.

    The five-member panel of Supreme Court justices led by Olabode Rhodes Vivour considered the action by the politicians not only inimical to national development, but unwholesome and dangerous. To underscore its anger, the court ordered the state government to pay the petitioners their salaries and allowances up to December 2011, when they would have constitutionally vacated office.

    This is victory for democracy. It once again brings to the fore the fact that no one under the democratic setting has absolute powers. The implication of the verdict goes beyond state-local government relations. Governments at all levels are fond of exercising vice grips on institutions of state. Governing councils of universities are whimsically dissolved, vice-chancellors are sacked and executive bodies left without boards for years. The spirit of the Supreme Court ruling is that these illegal acts must stop.

    We agree with the National Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE) that the ruling has come at the most appropriate time. However, the union’s call for “total autonomy” may be out of place because, in a federation, there can be no full autonomy for any tier of government as relationships are growingly becoming inter-dependent the world over. Even in the relationship between branches of government in countries where Separation of Powers is the order, it has been established that such separation is not water-tight.

    What Nigeria deserves is respect for the constitution and decisions of the courts. The 1999 Constitution is unambiguous in this respect. Section 7 (1) categorically states that: “The system of local government by democratically elected councils is hereby guaranteed.”  Although the constitution goes further to empower the state governments to enact laws “for the establishment, structure, composition, finance and functions of the councils”, such powers are limited by the functions assigned the councils in the Fourth Schedule to the Constitution and the allocation of funds from the centre. The local government areas are also listed in the supreme legal document.

    We hope the governors who have continued to see themselves as emperors in their states would give effect to this verdict since it is not the first time that such orders would be handed down by the court. In the instant case, the Court of Appeal had, in 2013, similarly declared the dissolution illegal and held that caretaker committees are unknown to the laws of the land. Yet, many states proceeded to appoint them. Perhaps the most notorious was the case of Anambra State where there were no elections since the inauguration of the Fourth Republic in 1999 and the end of Governor Peter Obi’s tenure in February 2014. In Imo State, Governor Rochas Okorocha appointed state legislators and members of his kitchen cabinet to run the councils.

    In other ways, the states undermine local councils. The people are robbed of the benefits of functional government at the grassroots level which would have served as means of recruiting future leaders for higher assignments, a cheaper and more efficient collection of rates as well as mobilising popular support for national ideals.

    While we acknowledge the arguments being canvassed for ceding full control of the local government areas to the states since they are not federating units, we are persuaded that the constitution should be obeyed and the positive benefits of the current system be allowed to accrue to Nigerians. We are convinced that Nigeria’s democracy can only develop if effective governance takes root at the local level.

  • Stopping truck drivers’ recklessness

    SIR, a few days ago, I watched with dismay an utter display of lawlessness and irrational behaviour by truck drivers and I had to ask myself the question – when will this recklessness and road terrorism end in our country?

    Many people seem to feel the same way with the attitude shown by these notorious drivers. It is a known fact that trucks on Nigerian roads are habitually found to indulge in over-loading, over-speeding, carrying unsecured containers, lane indiscipline, using rickety vehicles, driving with worn-out tyres and lack safety equipment, among other offences.

    These acts of lawlessness do not end there. The drivers’ penchant for violating traffic rules and regulations is alarming. Their attitude to vehicle maintenance is scarcely anything cheering. They compromise the integrity and road-worthiness of their vehicles with impunity and in the process, endanger the safety of other road users at will. What we see on our highways are carcasses of countless tankers, trucks and related articulated vehicles and reminding us of the abuse to which our public utilities have been subjected to in terms of decrepit highways and poorly maintained infrastructure such as telephone booths, railings, electricity and bridges.

    The main issues to contend with have to do with attitudinal prob­lem on the part of the drivers as well as the inability of road regulators to enforce the extant laws so as to punish traffic offenders.

    The FRSC needs to intensify efforts at addressing the continuous recklessness by curtailing the bad driving habits as well as the negative attitude of truck and trailer drivers through its four cardinal programmes of education, enlightenment, subtle force and full enforcement.

    Stemming the tide demands nothing short of strict enforcement of relevant traffic rules. Poor standardization of rules, weak and compromised enforcement, as well as dubious benchmarks for certifying both vehicles and users constitue a major obstacle for our road administrators to tackle.

    All tankers operating in the country should be made to compulsorily use retroflective tapes to ensure better sighting and anticipation of long vehicles when light from other ve­hicles are beamed on them, most especially at night when they usually break-down at dangerous spots when visibility is poor. Other law enforcement agencies should also assist in ensuring safe­ty on our roads. What they need to do, as a matter of urgency, is to desist from collecting bribe from the drivers. Furthermore, the ages of the vehicles in an economy such as ours may be an issue, but of greater concern is the mainte­nance and road-worthiness. Government should not allow the importation of rickety vehicles into the country under any guise.

    FRSC should put more efforts at engaging the various transport unions on the need for their members to be law-abiding and comply with the traffic rules and regulations. The commission should ensure the speedy prosecution of offenders at mobile courts for reckless and dangerous driving, speed limit violation, among other traffic offenses. More importantly, government should also ensure that our railways begin to function without delay. When this is done, most of the articulated vehicles that are seen wreaking havoc on our roads would no longer have any business in doing so.

    The government should muster the political-will to tame the cabal that has made our railways non-functional despite the huge national resources committed to this troubled aspect of our economy over the years. Perhaps, that could be a more pragmatic solution to stopping recklessness by truck drivers on our roads!

    • Adewale Kupoluyi 

    Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta

  • The recklessness of Buruji Kashamu

    Sometimes our politicians do not only lack decency, they also lack finesse. Hear what one of them, a prince, said in a recent interview in The Punch: “I’m ready to contribute resources for mobilisation but this is what many politicians don’t like doing. For example, I am ready to spend even N1billion to ensure the success of the PDP governorship candidate in Ekiti State during the forthcoming election. It would be a shame on my part if I failed to do that,” proclaimed Buruji Kashamu who parades himself as a PDP chieftain from Ogun State.

    As if the shamelessness was not enough, he ranted further, “I am ready to do the same thing in Osun and Oyo states.” This is a man who is clearly more interested in drawing attention to himself. He is from Ogun State, where he claims to be a party wheel horse. Why did he not even refer to the state? Is it because they won’t give him an opportunity to spend his money?

    For a man to say he gloats over the success he had in fighting former governor, Gbenga Daniel, to a standstill, one would have thought he would concentrate in his state. He probably has surrendered because he lives in Ogun State and has seen that he has no prayers against the good work of Governor Ibikunle Amosun.

    Maybe he has not travelled enough in Ekiti State to see what Governor Kayode Fayemi has transformed the state into. Maybe he will think twice about wasting his money.

    But he may be doing a world of good to the economy of that state by infusing N1billion into its economy, and Hardball is sure the people will receive his money with open arms. It is clear from what he says that he does not abide in the world of ideas. What is he fighting against in Ekiti? Is it the infrastructural developments that his PDP Segun Oni could not do in about six years? Or is it the quality enhancement of education, or is it healthcare or strides in tourism, or social security for the elderly?

    Kashamu does not speak ideas. He only speaks money, and the people of the Southwest know good money from bad money.

    Clearly he has not travelled to Osun State to see what Governor Rauf Aregbesola is doing, or Oyo to witness Ajimobi’s performance. If he has and he still wants to spend money against the good thing, then he will fall into what people in the Niger Delta call “money miss road.”

    In the interview he also had the indecency to say that he contributed 17 Sports Utility Vans (SUVs) and trailer loads of Ankara for Timipre Sylva, former Bayelsa State governor’s, election. He said the Ankara clothing materials were embossed with his picture and his deputy and he also gave Sylva “lots of cash.” He claimed later that Sylva gave him the IGR and that he transformed N200 million to N1billion monthly. So he is a contractor waiting to make profit for himself!

    This is recklessness on a high stage. We need restraint from our politicians, not the brutish extravagance, the type of public desperado like Kashamu wants to feed the public with.