Florence Uwaeme
The Corps Marshal Federal Road Safety Corps, Dr Boboye Oyeyemi has ordered the field operatives to clampdown on overloaded private school vehicles plying Nigerian roads as part of organised efforts to reduce crashes involving school children.
According to Bisi Kazeem , the spokesman of the Corps, the Corps Marshal has directed Sector Commanders across the 36 states of the federation, including the Federal Capital Territory to impound at sight, any private school bus carrying more than the required number of school children in the bus.
This operation will be carried out in the morning and afternoon when schools close for the day.
“The clampdown has become very necessary going by the deliberate efforts made by school proprietors, their management and the bus drivers to make mockery of established laws possibly to achieve some economic gains, at the detriment of the lives of the school children conveyed to and fro school by those buses.” He asserted.
He alleged that all efforts made to enlighten these drivers have been met with utter rejection. “We have tried to enlighten these drivers and the proprietors on many occasions to make them comply with the minimum safety standards on passengers carriage but they kept contravening the laws. The Corps is championing child safety campaign as it targets to reduce and possibly eradicate all crashes involving school children on our roads”.
In the same vein, the Corps Marshal has directed retraining of all drivers of this category nationwide to further concretize the anticipated total safety of school children.
The general public are advised to help make this campaign a success by reporting any of such buses seen with overloaded school children.
