Road Safety in Nigeria: A Panacea to achieving the SDG’s

 

During my years as an undergraduate at the prestigious Obafemi Awolowo University, one of the project i participated actively on achieving part of its set goals was the “Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s)” which was set to be achieved for year 2015 (then as an executive member of the “All Nigeria United Nations Students’ and Youth Association (ANUNSA)” ) but unfortunately the Nation has a whole couldn’t achieve much of the MDG’s despite all efforts by Students organizations and Non-Governmental Organizations. However, the United Nations Organization has set yet another ambitious goals to be achieved by Nations around the world and more importantly the developing countries and it was termed the “Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s).

However, the SDG’s will be very difficult to achieve if “Road Safety” is not at the core of the policy implementation. There is no better reason than the fact that it is only when humans are “safe” that development can truly occur.

Worldwide more than 1.25 million people lose their lives annually due to traffic crashes. Everyday nearly 1,049 people under the age of 25 lose their lives in traffic accidents. Road traffic accident is an issue of great international concern as it has emerged as the single greatest source of death all over the world. In the developing countries where the number of motor vehicles relating to population is generally much lower than in the developed countries, fatalities from automobile crashes are higher.

Traffic signs in relation with congestion and road accident occurrences have been a topic of considerable interest to researchers in the past few decades. There is a general perception that in most developing or undeveloped countries, road users do not have a satisfactory level of understanding of road traffic signs and often, this is thought to be a major cause of road accidents.

 

 Statistics from the Nigerian “National Bureau of Statistics “ (NBS) 2017 recorded 11, 363 road accidents. The report shows that speed violation was reported as the major cause of the accidents, which accounted for 42.69 per cent of the total road accidents reported. Loss of control and dangerous driving followed closely as they both accounted for 12.73 per cent and 7.34 per cent of the total road accidents recorded respectively. All these could be attributable to lack of knowledge of roads traffic signs, disobedience to road traffic signs or non-availability of road traffic signs along such corridors.

 

According to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the World’s population is projected to reach 9.8 billion. From 2017 to 2050, it is expected that half of the world’s population growth will be concentrated in just nine countries: India, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Pakistan, Ethiopia, the United Republic of Tanzania, the United States of America, Uganda and Indonesia (ordered by their expected contribution to total growth). China is projected to have 1.7 billion people; India 1.4 billion; Nigeria 411 million and the United States of America 390 million people which makes Nigeria the 3rd projected highest populated country in the world by 2050.

 

It is important that the government began to implement policies and put structures in place that will ensure that all Federal, State and Local government roads are furnished with “traffic signs”. There need to get the local government involved in this project so that many roads can be equipped with the road signs.

The Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), The Vehicle Inspection Service (VIS) and other state’s traffic enforcement departments need to educate, inform, enforce and promote the implementation and the obedience of road traffic signs across Nigeria. This will ensure we move towards a more sustainable and accident free society. More importantly the pedestrians and Non-motorized users must be given priority in these scheme.

I am optimistic that if these model is put in place starting now, Nigeria will to a large extent be on the right path towards achieving the “Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) and the Global Zero Vision towards eradicating accident on the roads by 2030.