A cross-session on Lagos motorists have responded to the announcement made by the Corps Marshal of the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), Dr Boboye Oyeyemi that the agency is organising a special operation targeted at detecting the violators of the use of driving licence.
According to car owners who spoke to our correspondents in Lagos, Port Harcourt and Abuja, it will amount to fraud and punishment for FRSC to begin a drive on use of driving licence when it takes an average of one year to get an original one.
A recent investigation carried out by Business Hilights in Lagos showed among other things that; FRSC currently has only one licence printing machine stationed in Abuja which can only produce average of 50 pieces in a day; All states get from the same one source; It takes an average of eight months to one year to process a valid driving; motorists are fed up with the complicity in processing the licence; FRSC and states’ Vehicle Inspection Office (VIO) in the Ministry of transportation are complicating ease of access.
Majority of motorists who spoke to our correspondent confessed that due to the cumbersome nature of the entire process and the delays in getting the licence even after following all due process compel them to fake it.
According to them, enforcing or expecting every Nigerian motorist to have the licence when it (FRSC) lacked the capacity to produce enough that will serve the nation is fraudulent and a criminal way of generating revenue for the government via sanctions.
To them, before a nationwide enforcement should be flagged off, FRSC should first of all decentralize the production to at least one in each of the six zones of the country for easy access and rise in average daily production.
Besides, motorists argued that it is criminal and inhuman for anyone to ask for what he or she knows that it has not and cannot go round considering the way and manner it is being produced now in Nigeria.
Besides, some top officials of the Commission who spoke on grounds of anonymity to our Abuja Bureau Chief said at some times, the only printing machine can park up, thus delaying printing.
The Corps Marshal of the FRSC, Dr Boboye Oyeyemi, had averred during the visit of the Secretary of Transportation for the FCT, Mr Kayode Opeifa, to his Abuja office that the practice of driving a vehicle without proper driving licence as is illegal and unacceptable. He stressed that the perpetrators would be sanctioned accordingly.
He further said that whoever violates this basic requirement would be apprehended and sanctioned appropriately.
