By Akintunde Jacobs, Akure
The Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), Ondo State Command has charged its officers to redouble their commitment on public enlightenment in order to reduce crashes on highway.
The State Sector Commander of FRSC, Ezekiel SonAllah, made the call on Sunday in Akure at the one-day capacity building organised for the officers of Public Enlightenment Office (PEO) across the command.
The workshop tagged “Public Education: A Panacea To Reduction Of Road Traffic Crash (RTC) in Nigeria.”
SonAllah, who explained that it was right time for officers to advocate aggressively on public enlightenment said that if people were well enlightened chances were there that crashes would reduce.
“This workshop is timely because we are already in Ember months and the time has come for us to double our efforts as far as public enlightenment is concerned.
“You are doing well before now but time has come to double your efforts by organising programme and visiting motor park, Churches, Mosques, market places and traditional institutions to talk to them about dangers of excess speed and overload.
“We can only safe life if people are enlightened and we need to understand that education was what the founding fathers of the corps used at the initial stage.
“So, it’s something we must continue to do through our demonstration and commitment,” he said.
SonAllah, therefore, called on motorists and road users to change their attitude towards unnecessary over speed saying life has no duplicate and drivers needs to drive to stay alive.
According to him, time has come for everybody to take responsibility and this is ember month where we expect high vehicular movement.
“You must improve the condition of your vehicles to ensure that their road worthy. You must obey traffic rules and regulations and uses defensive driving technics.”
Also speaking, the State Deputy Sector Commander and Head of Operation, Richard Adetoro, admonished the PEO’s officers to be commitment and shown passion in their job.
Adetoro, who said that the officers had a lot to do especially in the ember months said officers had to be passionately, cajoling, advising and appealing to the inner self of motorists about safety.
“You have to appeal to them (motorists) of important of their safety to their family members and preach the gospel either in churches or in commercial vehicles. But your own gospel is safety on highway,” he said.