Engineer Inusa Ahmed Abubakar is representing Yamaltu Deba Federal Constituency in the House of Representatives. He is Chairman House Committee on Federal Road Safety Commission. In an interview with some journalists in Gombe, Abubakar speaks on federal government’s approach to road safety and other national issues. JEDIDAH SILAS KIMAN was there for Blueprint.
As Chairman House Committee on Federal Road Safety Commission, may we know what is being put in place to ensure a reduced rate of road crashes? The target set before us by the United Nations Declaration on Road Safety, is that, by 2020, we must have reduced road crashes by 50%, and so far, the Nigerian Road Safety Commission has gone beyond that, in fact, it is serving as a leader in Africa, and by this, you can also agree with me that, the FRSC has been consistent in carrying out its primary assignment of ensuring safety of roads in Nigeria.
But you will also discover that, there is an issue of infrastructure, such as conditions of the roads, you also know that we have federal, state, as well as local government roads which the FRSC is not responsible for ensuring they are in good shape.
We have the agencies such as the Ministry of Works, Federal Emergency Road Maitenance Agency FERMA who are responsible for ensuring that the roads are good, even though they would tell you sometimes that, the economic base of this country is low.
Part of the interim solution is the speed limiter which some people suggested are the most problem contributing to road crashes, when we took a critical look at it, we came to discover that apart from the bad conditions of our roads, speed is not the only cause of road crashes, but the skill level of the driver, obedience to traffic rules, determines how safe the driver reaches his destination.
The truth is that, accidents don’t just happen, they are caused, and so we also need to look into issues like this and see how we could approach the problem.
In the House committee we made a discovery which we brought to the attention of the whole House, although the Committee’s final report is not yet out, we said, despite the fact that we need speed limiters we are of the opinion that, those companies who are trying to sell their products of speed limiters would only want to take advantage of our situation and make exploit.
Currently, We have about 25 million vehicles in this country and some of these companies are saying they want to sell a speed limiter at the cost of N36,000 each, now when you multiply 36,000 by 25 million you would get a figure of almost 1 trillion, and then you can begin to imagine a company mapping about N1 trillion from a people, an amount almost more that half of the entire country’s budget just to feed some cabals.
By looking at this fact we said, if we allow these companies to sell the speed limiters and at that rate, the advantage would be far lower than the disadvantage. We now said okay, in as much as speed limiters are important and we would want to control speed on our roads, we must adopt the international best practices.
The whole idea here is that, we are looking at a scenario where by, we will have not just a speed limiter but a monitoring device as well, so when a driver speeds at 120, or 70km per hour, and he/she has come to a place where he/she must go at 40km per hour, the monitoring device would be there to record the speed, such device which would have cameras could be installed on every Road Safety patrol van either stationed in one place or movable, and can capture all speeding vehicles within 500 meter radius, it can capture the plate number, the vehicle and record the speed as well.
By this, our Road Safety Officers would by the use of the monitoring device determine the level of offence, and then charge the offender a fine according to his offence. By this we believe, it would be a win win scenario for the government.
Some companies are ready to come through Private Public Partnership and are proposing a target of 500 Patrol Vehicles which they would be installed with the monitoring devices which would be stationed at strategic areas where they can capture moving vehicles on our highways.
As a member representing Yamaltu /Deba Constituency and a stakeholder in the Nyimatli community, how would you describe the importance of the just concluded Nyimatli cultural festival to your people?
Actually, this event as you rightly called it has been a cultural event from time immemorial with a very high significance in the history of the Nyimatli, popularly known as the Tera.
I know the in depth of it because, for the last four or five years, I have been the national vice president of the Tera Development Association,being a vice president and second in command, I can say that, these annual cultural festivals are held with very high esteem among the people, it has also served as one of the rallying point that brought about unity among the Tera people who are within the country and those in the diaspora and this is why we attach a very important significance to it.
Other issues spoken about at the event included the empowerment of youths and women, and generally, poverty eradication. What contribution have you made so far, and how would you assist in ensuring that, such effort is sustained?
This can be achieved very easily, Because being a stakeholder in Tera land, I have seen high potentials that we can mitigate to approach job creation for especially our youths. You know, people initially used to depend on government so that when you go to school you graduate from the normal pattern like in our own generation from secondary school you come back during vacation and you have some temporary job waiting for you,not to even talk of National Certificate on Education (NCE) and Diploma, now we have more graduates, fewer jobs and then the government is becoming more and more poorer, to the extent that, it can not afford to employ people just to be paying them.
Now we have to look inward and see how we could approach the situation, and that is why the government in its deliberate policy introduced the vocational education right in our secondary schools, we call it Vocational Acquisition so that when a student graduate he or she would have a skill to depend on. We are making emphasis on education because once you educate a society, you have solved more than half of the problem. Because when the society is educated it is easier to empower them, but without education the society is doomed.
On health, last December 2015, we introduced a programme where by, we collaborated with a Non Governmental Organisation and we brought medical consultants to Yamaltu Deba Local Government to give medical treatment to our people, and under this programme, over 7000 of our people received treatment on various diseases, apart from that, we are working to see that, such interventions have become a monthly programme.
In area the of agriculture, we have recently gone into partnership with the Federal Collage of Horticulture, and luckily enough the Collage’s provost Prof Fatima Sawa is chairing my committee on Agriculture. We are currently engaging the youths to see that they receive trainings in areas of fishery and poultry at micro level.
