BY GABRIEL  ENOGHOLASE

BENIN—WORRIED by what it termed “unacceptable and preventable bad attitudes” on highways by Nigerian drivers, which it said endangers lives and property, the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency, FERMA, weekend, inaugurated the South-South Zone II chapter of Federal Roads Committee on Surveillance and Action Against Roads Abuse, FERCSARA, in Benin, Edo State.

The committee’s mandate is to proffer solutions that would check road abuse, as well as arrest and prosecute those found to be involved in such abuses.

The committee, which has the acting Zonal Coordinator South-South Zone II of Federal FERMA, Engr. Richard Orhre as chairman, also has members drawn from the Army, Police, FRSC, Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, NSCDC, and National Union of Road Transport Workers, NURTW.

Inaugurating the committee, Air Commodore Idongesit Nkanga, (rtd), who represented FERMA board chairman, said that the agency had observed with dismay, the menace of road abuses, which has constituted a challenge to the task of effective road maintenance.

He listed some of the road abuses to include indiscriminate cutting of roads by individuals and corporate bodies without permission from FERMA, overloading of vehicles above admissible axle load, indiscriminate parking of heavy duty vehicles on shoulders and turning such places into trailer parks, and indiscriminate pasting and hoisting of advertisements, posters/bill on strategic parts of the roads especially kilometer posts, road signs and street light poles thereby, destroying the original intention and services they are made to perform.