By Johnbosco Agbakwuru
Calabar—Four officers of the Federal Road Safety Corps, FRSC, Cross River State Command, yesterday narrowly escaped being crushed by a taxi driver, whose name was given as one Mr. Smith Stanley in an attempt to escape arrest, having been flagged down for alleged traffic offences in Calabar.

However, the taxi driver was beaten to submission by the officers and men of the corps when policemen controlling traffic succeeded in stopping him while attempting to beat traffic.

Officials of FRSC in collaboration with Road Safety Marshalls, NYSC Safety Club among others were conducting the  yearly Yuletide awareness campaign on road safety along the popular Eleven-Eleven Bus stop, opposite the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, in the state capital, when the incident occurred.

The FRSC officials had stopped the driver to give him the sensitisation leaflets given to other motorists on how to regulate their speed during the Christmas season but incidentally noticed that the blue-colour taxi cab, an Aveo Chevrolet, with number plate, Cross River XB 533 CAL, was overloaded with six passengers, excluding the driver.

In attempting to escape, the driver used his vehicle to shove the four officials aside while manoeuvring his way through the traffic jam, but ran out of luck when a police Traffic Warden used another vehicle to block the taxi.

His action infuriated officials of the corps, who immediately dragged him out of the cab and punched him severally before eventually impounding the vehicle.

When confronted on the issue, the Sector Commander of FRSC in Cross River State, Mr. Taiwo Eseyin, said any driver who contravened the law would be brought to book.

Eseyin, who was not at the scene of the incident, however, said officials of the commission had gone out to enlighten people on the need to observe caution while driving during this festive season but not expected to deal with traffic offenders negatively.

He said, “We have all gone out to different routes on enlightenment campaign and not to negatively discipline offenders. If anybody contravenes the law, we will get him defaulted, according to the service law. That man had disobeyed and was attempting to run away, he saw our vehicles and officials in their uniforms, he ought not to have done what he did.”

Eseyin said that the essence of the sensitization campaign was to enlighten the drivers and other road users to obey traffic rules and regulation especially during the Yuletide, assuring that the commission would work to reduce the rate of auto crashes by 50 per cent before year 2020 in the country.

“By the Decade of Action, we mean before the year 2020; we want to make sure that road accidents are reduced during the Yuletide season by 50 per cent. We want to make sure that as many people that die this season will not be more than half of the number of people that die in December last year,” he said.