Mr John Adekunle Akolo, Lagos State sector commander of the Federal Road Safety Commission, speaks on the plans the commission has for children especially at this period of holiday when many of them will be travelling CHILDREN are always at the receiving end when it comes to road safety.

What actually is the commission doing about it?

There are plans to reverse the trend because we are aware that children are knocked down, killed or injured on the road for faults that are not theirs. The people operating the vehicles are not children and so we feel that children should be saved from being at the receiving end and as far as the FRSC is concerned, we are now shifting our attention to children. For many years, we have been working more on adult road users and so many of them have not taken seriously what we have been telling them.

We now feel that it is better we start educating the children so that when they grow up and have access to own vehicle, they would have imbibed all the necessary values about road culture and by that time we hope to have better and safer road users. For that reason, we decided to form road safety clubs in primary and secondary schools and we have in Lagos alone nothing less than 2000 members.

We also invite them for children programmes that centre purely on road safety like quiz competition, debates etc. Trophy are given to the best schools. We also made sure that we visit at least eight schools per day in Lagos to educate them on road safety. As a result of the efforts of FRSC, the Federal Ministry of Education last year approved the inculcation of road safety curriculum in schools. With that, we would be able to educate children more on road safety. Last year, about 1000 teachers in the FCT were taught how to handle children education on road safety and we expect the training to go round all the geo-political zones. The commission has also developed cartoon books, road safety games just to mention a few, in order to make it easier for children to learn.

We decided to focus on the children now because the situation we are having at hand is that adults road users are not easy to change. If you tell an adult to drop a habit, he will drop the bad habit and pick up another one but children will never do that. As a result of the education the commission is giving the children, they are the ones now teaching their parents like when to put the seat belt, when to obey traffic light and when not to over-speed. So, we realised that children are more obedient than adult.

An adult can be arrested for not putting on seat belt, such a person can beg you and you warn him/her feeling that he will drop that bad habit of not using seat belt but you will be surprised to see him making phone calls while driving tomorrow. Anyway, we have started with our children by educating them and we are very hopeful that the situation will change with time.

How effective is the curriculum?

Like I told you, all the teachers have not yet been trained on how to handle that aspect. It was only within the FCT and environs that teachers were trained and taught how to handle the road safety aspect of education. Plans are on the way to spread the training which is called train the trainers to all the geographical zones in Nigeria. It cannot be achieved in one day but surely we will achieve the goal.

This holiday, is there any programme for the kids as many of them will be traveling?

Within the last three months, we have brought children to our premises three times that involved more than 2000 kids. We gave them road safety tips. During the holiday period, parents are always skeptical about releasing their wards but we are arranging with schools to ensure children can register and come through their schools for the programme we have for them because there is no how one can get to individual child during holiday. Also we are hoping to get some of these cartoon books to all schools to be kept in their libraries and even safety games that can engage them during holiday will be given to schools.

Is the government making it a compulsory subject for all pupils?

It is a compulsory subject since the government has agreed to include it in the curriculum of primary and secondary schools. It is not optional. We are talking about safety. It does not respect anybody. Can we say some should be safety conscious and other should not? It is for all children of school age.

All these programmes you organised for children in Lagos State, do other states have such programme?

All that happened here as regard safety programmes for children also happen in other states of the federation. Lagos is under Abuja and likewise other states. The road safety club we are setting up in Lagos is also being set-up in other commands.

Adults are difficult to correct as you have said. What are the necessary things you are doing to curb their excesses as the children are learning on their own part?

We are not abandoning the adults. We are about approaching another peak period of the year which is popularly called "ember" months. Higher number of road accidents are usually recorded as if ember months are meant for accident to occur and have we ever sat down to ask ourselves why. The reason is simple, we have more people moving from one point to the other and because there is more movement, drivers are ever ready to drive 48 hours non-stop to make money. No rest, no sleeping and before you know it, they doze off and there is accident. That period too, they don't create time for them to repair their vehicle. They always manage so as to make money. They are the ones that even buy tokunbo tyres most and that causes a lot of casualty on the road.

What can be done in the case of vehicle driving against the traffic and children are not aware?

By the time you see somebody driving against the traffic, you start wondering whether that person is normal. Somebody in his right senses would not drive one way under whatever reason.

Such a person is endangering his/her life and the lives of other

people. Anybody that is sane will not go and face on-coming traffic. It is when you are alive that you can get to the destination you are rushing to.

In the past, there were gadgets that were being used to know if a driver was over-speeding or drunk etc. What is happening now?

All these gadgets are still in place. Road safety has not changed but the situation at hand now is different. We are in a democracy and everybody has rights to him/ herself. If you arrest somebody now on the road, he will claim some rights and democracy gives rights to do virtually anything but not to kill yourself.

The government is there to protect that life and so you cannot do anything you like with your life even if there are no law enforcement agents on the road. As an adult, own a vehicle and drive the vehicle without anybody policing you on the road, bearing in mind that you can be penalised if you do a wrong thing. You can be arrested or even be involved in an accident.

Any advice for children?

We want to advise children from the command that now that they are on vacation, we wish them the best of holiday. Make best use of the holiday and if there is any cause to go out without your parents, you must be very careful and watchful on the road so that you don't get knocked down. Don't forget all you've been taught on road safety. We love you and wish that you become better road users by the time you grow up.