The Federal Road Safety Corps says the Governor of Kogi State, Captain Idris Wada has pleaded with the corps to commence training for drivers in his convoy.
This followed the repeated road traffic crashes involving his convoy, particularly, the Tuesday incident where the former President of Academic Staff Union of Universities, Prof. Festus Iyayi, was killed.
The Corps Marshal and chief Executive of FRSC, Mr. Osita Chidoka, who said this while addressing reporters on the activities marking the 2013 Africa Road Safety and World Day, in remembrance of road crashes’ victims on Thursday in Abuja, blamed the frequent road crashes involving the governor’s convoy on unqualified drivers.
Chidoka denied reports which blamed the governor’s convoy for the cause of the accident which terminated the life of of Iyayi, noting that the corps had commenced investigation into the fatal crash, adding that the outcome of the investigation would be made public.
“The FRSC would not have said so when the investigation into the crash is still ongoing,” he added.
He regretted the non-participation of Kogi convoy drivers in its training scheme, a situation he attributed to the ugly trend which had also occurred in the convoys of the Deputy Governor, Yomi Awoniyi, and the Speaker of the State House of Assembly in recent times.
He said the commission had embarked on training convoy drivers, so that they could be better drivers.
He said , “Unfortunately the Kogi State convoy drivers have not been involved in this training. Am just been told by the Sector Commander that the governor has asked him to take all the convoy drivers from Kogi State for this training, because, Kogi convoy drivers were not involved in this training.
“Of the 700 convoy drivers we trained in the last two years, from that day till date, none of them have been involved in any road crash. The only crash we have seen so far from convoys are from people that have not attended our training.”