The Lagos Sector commander of the Federal Road Safty core FRSC Core commander Olusegun Ogungbemide is here to discuss safety parameters for the Ember month and the initiative to make sure people know what to do to avoid speeding, overloading and avoiding unsafe tires to ensure people arrive safely at their destination.
What have you observed so far in this season and what is your advice to commuters?
I don’t think there’s anything unique for this year because for the last 7 months we have been battling the issue of traffic gridlock along the corridor it’s quite huge and it has been a big embarrassment to all of us.
I would say it has gone a long way to prepare us for this season so we were waiting and we are here already.
All the machinery has been put in place, we have our men, and the operatives are there 24 hours we have also started our sensitization program which is a uniquely selected theme for this year as a result of the research that has been carried out in the past months. That is,
- Avoiding speeding
- Avoid Overloading
- And Unsafe tires for you to arrive at your destination safely and that is the temple of how we are operating now.
How is your scheduling on the management of the Lagos-Ibadan express road which is still under construction?
Last year I made a statement in one of the media houses that whatever we experience on the Lagos-Ibadan express in form of gridlock would be child’s play compared to what will happen later when we get closer to Lagos.
We are not treating a virgin land, we are working on a road that is already existing, that is being plied by huge traffic every day. We are talking about the convergence of all the circular activities heading towards the same direction.
The unfortunate thing about the area is that there’s no room for alternate movement. The one people are even calling an alternate route is the NNPC pipeline area which is even riskier for anybody to say he is going to do any major work there.
We are all expected to concentrate on that major road, we were prepared, we prepared the men and on daily basis, you will agree with me that at any time you will always see FRSC operatives there but we can not be there for 24 hours because naturally for as late as 9 pm-10 pm depending on the incident.
When there are crashes we call back to save the situation but for me to say I keep my men up there for 24 hours, I will not be saying the truth but for the major part of the day, morning to like 10 pm there are always there.
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