Abuja: Pupils’ daily encounter with speeding traffic

Keshi and her friends carefully cross the road on their way to and from school.Keshi said: “I feel safe, because I know how much it takes for me to look left and right. The vehicles are conducted and most times there is traffic light.”Her friend Precious Braimah feels safe using the rare zebra crossing when […]

Keshi and her friends carefully cross the road on their way to and from school.
Keshi said: “I feel safe, because I know how much it takes for me to look left and right. The vehicles are conducted and most times there is traffic light.”
Her friend Precious Braimah feels safe using the rare zebra crossing when she finds one and believes she’s mature “enough to know the difference between right and left.”
Mary Onoja, a three-year-old pupil said she always goes to school with her sister in order to cross the road. She said the sister will drop her in school before going to her own school and also come to pick her at the close of the day.
For John Ajayi (6yrs) in a government school, they always wait in a group where there are traffic wardens who usually stop the vehicles to let them cross and in a situation where there are no traffic wardens, some adults usually come to their rescue.
Most schools – both public and private in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), are usually positioned along highways where people can easily sight them at a glance, Daily Trust has observed.
The positioning is deliberate so that parents can easily locate the schools and bring in or pick up their wards after school hours.
Daily Trust observed that because of their locations, most pupils and students have to cross roads at one time or the other to get to their schools. Thus, risk being involved in road accidents.
Hundreds of Nigerian children risk being killed or injured in road traffic accidents every day they leave school or home while walking along the road, crossing a road or riding in a car.
According to the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC), nearly 2000 children died in road accidents around the country between 2010 and 2014, while about 8,667 others were injured in road accidents.
According to the commission’s public education officer, Imoh Etuk, a total of 61,806 reports of road crashes involving children were recorded during the period under review.
He said in the last five years, 1,138 male and 765 female children have been killed in road crashes, while 5,426 male and 3,241 female children were injured.
It was observed that the increasing number of road accidents involving school children within the FCT has given rise to the introduction of school bus system by private schools to pick the children from their homes to school and return them back to their respective homes after schools hours.
This however attracts extra charges on the part of the parents, Daily Trust has gathered.
The bus system despite serving a vital role has now become a thing of concern to parents and members of the public due to the recklessness of the drivers assigned the job of conveying the children.
The recklessness of the drivers is posing serious danger to the lives of innocent children, most of whom cannot detect the consequences of dangerous driving not to talk of avoiding it, it was observed.
Some parents and members of the public have raised alarm on the need to address the issue to save the lives of their wards before the threat to life gets out of hand.
A mother, Mrs. Joy Manasseh, said the idea of school bus is a very good development because it helps both the pupils and parents to avoid the danger of children crossing the road.
But she said the behaviour of most of the drivers is not encouraging because most of them endanger the lives of the children through reckless driving.
“You will see some of the children sleeping and others playing because they don’t know whether the driver is doing the right thing or not,” she said.
She said: “I think the parents need to call the attention of the proprietors so that they caution the drivers. Those that cannot change their behaviours should be sacked to save the lives of the children.”
Another mother, Mrs. Bola Gbenga, said the recklessness of school bus drivers is something that the management of schools need to look into; some of them are just driving not minding the children they are conveying, she said.
On why she subscribed to the school bus, Gbenga said even though it is additional expenses, it seems the best option because it eases the problem of carrying the kids to school and bringing them back home as well as the risk of crossing the roads.
“In a situation where I cannot go to pick my kids or send someone, I am not always comfortable because some people can be careless in handling kids,” she said.
The proprietor of a private school in Abuja, Mike Sule, said the drivers were mostly reckless because there is no one to caution them whenever they engaged in reckless driving.
“Schools’ managements should start attaching their drivers with highly responsible staff that can caution them since most of the kids cannot differentiate between good driving and bad one.
“I saw one of such drivers driving with an earpiece clamped on his ears. I think parents need to reach out to school authorities to address the problem. The school authorities should also create a platform where people can report such drivers,” he suggested.
Dennis Oloriegbe, speaking on the safety of children crossing the road by themselves said: “When children are using the road, they don’t know the extent or the speed limit. They don’t know the consequences. It is beyond looking left, right and left again. They have to know the right places to cross the road: You don’t cross the road at a sharp bend, you don’t have walkways, so you must keep left and face oncoming vehicles.”
‘Safe to Learn’ emphasises that children have a right to safe journey to school, adding that many are killed on their way to and from school, while walking to class or hit by speeding traffic while attempting to cross a four-lane highway.
The report states: “We all have a duty to do whatever we can to challenge and change this. And we can make roads safer for children.
We can do it by implementing policies that will protect children now and in the future, and by implementing a ‘Safe System’ approach beginning with effective institutions and rule of law; with measures to improve infrastructure safety and to make vehicles safer and more pedestrian-friendly.”
Other measures to be put in place include reducing speed limits wherever and whenever children and vehicles are likely to meet; investing in safe public transport and supporting sustained and fair enforcement of laws.
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child notes that children should not face daily, high speed, violence at the hands of adults.
However, Abuja has completed more than a dozen pedestrians crossing on highways and is considering enforcing sanctions to stop residents who insist on crossing four-lane highways.