Abuja – Mr Babatunde Fashola, the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, on Monday in Abuja proposed community service as a penalty for traffic offenders in the country.
Fashola made the proposal at the House of Representatives’ public hearing on a Bill to Amend the Federal Road Safety Commission Act 2004.
The minister decried the behaviour of some road users who violate road traffic rules, thereby endangering the safety of other road users.
He urged the legislature to be more innovative in the penalties to be enacted into law in order to effectively reduce accidents on the roads.
“The penalties proposed in the bill seem to focus on custodian and peculiar to the extent that they have existed for quite a while without seeing an appreciable reduction in the incidents.
“Perhaps, parliament can be a little more daring and a little more innovative in some of the kinds of penalties it wants to consider,’’ he added.
According to Fashola, jail terms and fines do not correct this category of offence.
“Irrespective of the fine, they will commit the offence anyway. So parliament in this sense is invited to consider sanctions like community service,’’ Fashola said.
He also canvassed for psychological test and compulsory retraining and recertification of such offenders under supervision.
Earlier, the sponsor of the bill, Rep. Jagaba Jagaba (APC-Kaduna), said that attitudinal change among road users was crucial in reducing road carnages in the country.
Jagaba said that the rate of deaths recorded from road accidents motivated him to initiate the amendment of the Act.
“Worried by the rate of deaths prevailing on our roads, I began to wonder why this is so.
“Sadly, my personal experiences on our highways provided me with strong conviction that most accidents are not mainly as a result of bad roads, but bad driving habits.
“This gave me the impetus to initiate the amendment of the Act.
“For instance, most roads in the city centre in Abuja are well paved and tarred, yet on daily basis one keeps seeing scenes of accidents on the same good roads.’’
He said that the proposed bill intends to curtail driving against the prescribed manner such as violation of traffic lights, use of extra headlamps at night and hitting a pedestrian on zebra crossing.
Others are reversing on highways, driving without headlamps, hawking on the highway and refusal to use pedestrian bridges, thereby posing danger to other road users.
“As enunciated in the bill, if these bad habits that are exhibited on our roads are made punishable by law, perhaps some sanity will be maintained on our roads,’’ Jagaba insisted.
