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From Sola Ojo, Kaduna
The crashed truck that killed 12in Karuna last week Monday
Monday, March 4, 2024, will remain unforgettable for the families and friends of 12 male adults who died in a road accident at Tashar Yari village, Makarfi Local Government Area of Kaduna State. The incident by 7:30am was said to have been caused by wrongful overtaking, over-speeding and overloading by the trailer.
Bature
Often, when crashes involving articulated vehicles occur, they come with the sad news of death, maiming, loss and destruction of property and road infrastructure running into millions of naira.
The causes of road accidents include weak implementation of safety policies by the concerned government agencies, bad road network, bad vehicles and attitude of road users.
Jafiya
According to the Corps Marshal of the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), Dauda Ali-Biu, 5,081 people were killed in recorded road traffic crashes (RTCs) across Nigeria in 2023, though showing ‘reduction’ as against 6,456 in 2022.
Other statistics by the FRSC showed that, between August 2020 and August 2021, the corps recorded 1,070 crashes involving articulated vehicles, comprising 378 tankers and 792 trailers across the country with 261 lives lost and 223 badly injured in those crashes.
When contacted on phone, the secretary, of the Kaduna State Chapter of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), Comrade Bature Yusuf Suleiman, said the majority of truck drivers guilty of overloading were not union members in the state.
He said, as far as the union in Kaduna was concerned, there wwere internal mechanisms in place to check the excesses of members, in addition to constant training by the constituted authorities.
“We have been inviting the established government agencies, like FRSC and KASTLEA, regularly to come and sensitise and educate our members on safe driving.
“In addition to that, we have been having regular meetings within, all to ensure we have a reduction in crashes, because lives and property are always involved.
“So, we teach safe driving always because we know what it means when breadwinners, including our members, lose their lives just because they are moving from one place to another.
“Let me add that most of the drivers of the trailers that do those things are not our members here in Kaduna. Most times, they are only passing through Kaduna either coming from the southern part of the country to the northern part of the country and vice-versa.
“The one that happened a few days ago along the Zaria-Kano highway was not from Kaduna. In our jurisdiction, we hardly see such behaviour,” he said.
Sector commander, FRSC, Kaduna State Command, Kabir Y. Nadabo, told Daily Sun that the command was doing a lot around education and enforcement, which, he said, have led to the reduction of road accidents in the state.
Shedding more light on overloading by truck drivers, public enlightenment officer, FRSC, RS.1, Kaduna State Sector Command, Margaret Jafiya Milam, said, generally, overloading was a problem and FRSC has been working towards stopping it since its inception.
To her, when it comes to overloading that involves trucks carrying goods and passengers, FRSC sees it as an eyesore, a serious problem to both the people involved and the country as a whole.
“What we do is to enlighten the members of the transport unions, especially the NURTW, which is the well-known umbrella body for these people. We regularly tell them that under no circumstances should their members put passengers on top of goods. Vehicles meant for goods must be goods-only,” she said.
According to her, most of these trucks are from far northern states, loading grains and animals en route Kaduna and the southern states, and, most times, they don’t load their vehicles with passengers at the take-off point.
She said: “They pick up these passengers as they progress in their journey, which is not right. We understand that those conveying animals are expected to carry only animals, straw and, possibly, a few people that will take care of these animals as they move because they are long journeys that most times take days.
“Another thing we have discovered is that the passengers see this as a cheap means of transporting themselves from one part of the country to another for reasons known to them.
“So, we always enlighten the transporters of the consequences and dangers of such acts. The fatality is usually high when they are involved in crashes. Many casualties are recorded because bags of grains or animals fall on top of the passengers when their vehicles are involved in crashes.
“We also check them when they have a stopover at the toll gate, for example, just to be sure they don’t have passengers sitting on grains or animals. But since they know we do that, constantly, they changed their locations.
“Sometimes, some of these trailers carry as much as 100 people. In some instances, these people the law enforcers are trying to save would come down and attack them.
“The long and short of this is that it was never an acceptable practice for people to sit or sleep on top of trucks, no matter what.
“Going forward, what we are trying to do is to form a task force across the states where this practice is common to see that they are checked and booked accordingly.
“All hands would be on deck for this operation. The union members will be part of the task force, the FRSC, the police and other relevant state agencies like Kaduna State Transport Law Enforcement Agency (KASTLEA) to augment our activities.
“FRSC is not happy with the number of lives being lost as a result of crashes, which in most cases are avoidable. FRSC is appealing to trailer drivers to stop the act of carrying passengers on goods while other people are advised to think of their safety and their loved ones and stop using trailers for their journey,” she said.
