The Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), Lagos State Sector Command says articulated vehicles drivers with goods, passengers and animals on vehicle top will be prosecuted in a mobile court.
Patrick Davou, Sector Commander, FRSC, Lagos, said this during a special operations and enforcement on clampdown on articulated vehicles carrying animals, humans and vehicles carrying fuel in jerrycans on Monday in Lagos.
“It is an offence to carry passengers, animals on vehicle top and the FRSC frowns against such behavior.
“On today’s operation, we have apprehended some of the trucks with passengers and goods on top of their vehicles and they will be tried in a mobile court.
“We are going to enforce this and this is a nationwide campaign by the FRSC, we have been mandated to apprehend all drivers of articulated vehicle found breaking the law.
“We have done a lot of advocacy visits and enlightenment and now it is the enforcement stage,” he said.
The FRSC Lagos boss also informed all truck owners that henceforth, any truck carrying goods and passengers, men of FRSC are on the highway and would apprehended them.
He added that this was of essence as recently, lives are being lost as a result of this attitude and behavior.
“We are calling on all motorists, especially truck drivers to desist from the behavior.
“We are also campaigning against people carrying fuel in jerry cans in their vehicles, any vehicle seen with such will be stopped and the driver asked to empty the fuel inside its tank.
“If the tank cannot carry the whole fuel, the driver will find a means to dispose the fuel, the official of FRSC will not allow him to go with the fuel in the jerrycan.
“This exercise is continuous, the motoring public will be seeing us more often, staging a mobile court on these issues and mostly on interstate buses,” he said.
Davou pointed out that the FRSC as the lead agency for traffic management and control cannot fold its hands and see people doing these kind of things where lives are lost.
“These trucks caught now, the passengers on top will be dropped, they will not continue the journey with the truck and the driver of the vehicle will be charged at the mobile court.
“This campaign started long before now, recently we brought many of them to the office and they were booked but this time now they will be sent to the mobile court so that people will know that the enforcement had started in earnest, there is no going back.
“Like last week, we went to an abattoir where we met the Seriki, truck drivers and we spoke to them and there we learnt that it was not the drivers that put the passengers on top the truck but people that had hired them as they want to cut down cost.
“We want this message to get to the hirers and owners of these truck, and they should insist that such overloading should discontinue,” he said.
