By Amina Mahmud

THE Corps Marshal, Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), Boboye Oyeyemi has ordered a nationwide clampdown on overloaded private school vehicles in order to reduce road crashes involving school children.

In a series of tweets on the official Twitter handle @FRSCNigeria, Boboye said Sector Commanders across the 36 states of the federation, including the Federal Capital Territory have been directed to impound at sight, any private school bus carrying more than the required number of children in the bus.

In the tweet, Bisi Kazeem, spokesman of the Corps, also stated that the clampdown has become very necessary going by the deliberate efforts made by school proprietors, their management and the bus drivers to make mockery of established laws possibly to achieve economic gains, to the detriment of the lives of the school children conveyed to and fro school by those buses.

“We have tried to enlighten these drivers and the proprietors on many occasions to make them comply with the minimum safety standards on passengers’ carriage but they kept contravening the laws,” Kazeem said.

“The Corps is championing child safety campaign as it targets to reduce and possibly eradicate all crashes involving school children on our roads.”

He added that the Corps Marshal has also directed the retraining of all drivers of this category nationwide to further concretize the anticipated total safety of school children.

“To help the Corps achieve success in this campaign, the public is encouraged to always tune into the @TrafficRadio1 107.1FM to report any of such buses seen with overload school children or any obstruction or emergency noticed on the road for immediate action”, Kazeem implored members of the society.