By Moses Emorinken
Works and Housing Minister Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN) has blamed speed violations for the highest number of road crashes, and not bad roads.
The minister said speed violations account for 32.8 per cent of all road crashes across the country.
He noted that while bad roads contribute 1.3 per cent, other human factors, such as speed violations, loss of control, sign light violation, dangerous driving, wrongful overtaking, among others, make up 87 per cent of all road crashes across the country.
Fashola recalled that last January, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) recorded the highest number of road crashes (106) with 17 people killed, while Kogi State had 67 road crashes with 60 deaths.
The minister said Lagos had the highest number of booked offenders, meaning that it had the highest level of road traffic enforcement across the country.
Fashola spoke on Monday in Abuja during a virtual seminar on his 58 birthday, with the theme: Building A Road Towards Better Driving Culture.
He said: “The default narrative is always that the road is bad. This is not the truth. We have said this narrative for an entire generation. Perhaps if we had earlier than now focused on what was the major cause, we may not have the numbers that we see. The GABFEST intervention is to provoke a new thinking from today.
“Although bad roads contribute, according to the figures, in January 2021, 691 lives were lost. That is a lot of lives that have been lost in one month. The people who died as a result of road crashes in January were more than those we lost to COVID-19 and to malaria combined.
“We need to pay more attention to…
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