NIGERIA is one of the countries with the highest rate of fatalities from Road Traffic Crashes (RTCs) globally. Within the country, the FCT and some other states consistently record high RTC cases annually.
On Sunday, June 19, 2022, an 18-seater bus carrying 19 travellers had been journeying to Kano from Lagos when it crashed into a stationed truck and went up in flames at Gidan-Mangoro, along the Minna-Bida road, Niger state.
The accident occurred in the early hours of the day. Before a rescue team arrived, 18 passengers had been burnt beyond recognition and died at the spot, leaving just one occupant badly injured.
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Since the travellers’ identities could not be ascertained, a mass burial was organised at the Gidan-Mangoro burial ground, and the corpses were laid to rest.
Niger is one of the states that make up North-Central Nigeria, a region which has proven to be a high-risk zone for motorists, according to data from the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
Generally, Africa is infamous for having the world’s highest road accident death rates. Nigeria tops the list of countries with the most fatalities from traffic crashes, according to a 2014 report by the Global Road Safety Facility (GRSF).
The GRSF is a global multi-donor fund hosted by the World Bank, which seeks to help governments develop road safety management capacity and scale up its delivery in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).
Nigeria also has the highest road injury death rate (52.4 per 100,000 people) of any country in the world, and together with Ethiopia, South Africa, and Sudan, accounts for half the road injury and death toll of sub-Saharan Africa, according to the report titled ‘Burden of Road Injuries in Sub-Saharan Africa’ states.
Data from the NBS and the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) websites show that there were 13,656 crashes in 2022. Of this figure, the North-Central region accounted for 4,792, over 35 per cent of the total cases across the country.
The region also accounted for more than 31 per cent of road accidents in 2021, with 4,056 out of 13,027 crashes recorded.
Also, 6,456 people were killed due to crashes in 2022, of which 1,824 deaths were recorded in the North-Central.
While the North-Central region is generally a high-risk zone, Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory (FCT) accounts for most of the crashes and deaths within the region in 2022.
FCT leads cases of traffic accidents in 2022
Across the country, the FCT recorded the highest number of RTCs in 2022. While there were 1,117 cases in 2021, crashes in the FCT rose to 1,803 in 2022, a 61 per cent increase.
Almost 18 per cent of road traffic accidents recorded across the country in 2022 occurred within the FCT, according to data from NBS and FRSC.
The NBS also identified speed violations as Nigeria’s leading cause of road accidents.
The ICIR reported that the FCT led as the city with the highest RTC cases in 2015 with 1293 crashes, in 2016 with 1,373 crashes and in 2017 with 1,106 crashes.
The FCT also topped RTC cases in 2018 with 1,051 and in 2019 with 972 cases.
Sign light violations, dangerous driving, route violation, and wrongful overtaking are some of the other leading causes of road traffic crashes in the FCT and the entire North-Central region.
Corps Public Education Officer (CPEO) of the FRSC Bisi Kazeem also confirmed to The ICIR in a report that overspeeding and violation of traffic rules are significant causes of accidents in the North-Central region.
“It has been noticed that drivers and other road users tend to comply with traffic laws whenever they see FRSC personnel on the road. The corps management decided to ensure adequate personnel deployment to ensure compliance and enlighten the motoring public when they go against established regulations,” Kazeem said.
While motorists in North-Central Nigeria face higher risks of road crashes, their counterparts in the South-East are least likely to be involved in auto accidents.
In 2022, the South-East accounted for only 760 traffic crashes in Nigeria. The South-South also had low RTC cases, with 859 crashes.
Other dangerous states in 2022
South-Western Nigeria follows closely as one of the regions with the highest RTC cases in 2022, with 3,402 crashes during the year under review.
Ogun state recorded the most traffic crashes in the South-West, with 1,243 cases in 2022.
Nasarawa, Kaduna, Oyo, Lagos, and Niger states also recorded high cases of traffic crashes, with 959, 875, 659 and 609 and 543 cases in 2022.
These states and the FCT have consistently recorded high RTC cases. In 2021, The ICIR reported that FCT, Kaduna and Niger were responsible for more than half the deaths from road accidents in Nigeria.
Laws on speed limits are being implemented – FRSC
Despite high rates of RTCs recorded in Nigeria, the GRSF report says road injuries and deaths are severely underreported in Nigeria
“Road injury deaths are severely underreported in most sub-Saharan countries. Our estimates are often six times those of official government statistics. In Nigeria, they are 14 times the official statistics of the national road death toll,” the report states
The ICIR reached out to the FRSC CPEO, Bisi Kazeem, to ascertain efforts being made to curb speed violations in the FCT and across Nigeria.
He says “Some of the steps being put in place to address speed violation are: deployment of speed calming at strategic junctions, compulsory enforcement of installation of speed limiting device in commercial vehicles, deployment of radar gun at strategic locations, special patrol operation targeted towards speed, drug and alcohol test for drivers”.
Kazeem also noted that weekly rallies and public education and enlightenment activities are usually carried out at motor parks, along with enforcement against indiscriminate parking, to check over speeding within the FCT.
According to a report, by the French Institute for Research in Africa, Nigeria, the number of registered vehicles in a given location can determine the frequency of traffic crashes within the area.
Data from the FRSC website shows that in 2022, Lagos, Ogun and FCT, three states that consistently top cases of traffic crashes in the North-Central and South-Western regions, also had the highest number of National Driving License (NDL) registrations, which suggests a high driving population.
Lagos had a total of 255,187 new registrations in 2022. Ogun followed with a distant 79,034, while FCT had 73,092.
Although the FCT had the highest number of RTCs out of the three states in 2022, despite having the least NDL registrations, this may be linked to the better road network in the FCT than the other states, as the report also states that good roads tend to result in over speeding, a leading cause of traffic crashes in the FCT.
“In the North, FCT (Abuja) has one of the best road networks in the country. Yet good roads also entail over-speeding and a high risk of fatal accidents,” the report stated.
Cover image by Tumisu from Pixabay
Note: This report was updated to include the last five paragraphs
Ijeoma Opara is a journalist with The ICIR. Reach her via vopara@icirnigeria.org or @ije_le on Twitter.