By Olasunkanmi Akoni

Mr. Ayodeji Peters Oyedokun, is the Chief Executive Officer CEO, LASDRI, Olasunkanmi Akoni, recently visited Oshodi centre and had a chat with him with focus on the update of the on-going re-certification exercise of all commercial vehicle drivers and conductors operating in the state as well as other transport related issues in the state. Excerpts:

On the exercise so far

As you can see, we have a lot of drivers on ground. Originally, the centre has capacity to take 75 people per day but we have expanded our facility to respond to the demands. We are now operating two shifts. Oshodi now attends to 150 drivers daily. Also in Lagos Island, one will discover that people are responding. The drivers are coming forward for their registration and re-accreditation. The issue of deadline doesn’t affect LASDRI. And the reason was that anyone could decide to become a professional driver. And if they come forward, the institute will register  and accredit them. What I know is that the enforcement is still ongoing. It is having effect on the attendance at the institute.

But one may feel that the process is a bit slow, but I want to say that the process is not slow, anyone who is yet to undergo training in any of the LASDRI centres across the state, for the mandatory annual recertification for all professional drivers can come forward to LASDRI. The training process requires that the driver attends a lecture on how to drive safely. After, his biometrics would be captured among others. At the completion of this exercise, the driver will be accredited to be able to drive a commercial public transport in the state.

*Oyedokun

At the moment, the state government is appealing to professional drivers not to concentrate on Oshodi centre alone. This is because we have other four centres. The attendances in the LASDRI centres are building up at the moment; except for Badagry and Epe. Maybe this is due to the population of drivers that ply the roads on these axis at the moment. All those centres have been well equipped by the state government. The equipments have been doubled to respond to the at
tendance explosion.

For now, we haven’t experienced the number that we couldn’t respond to. We are responding to the attendance. Even when the state executive mobilized everyone to visit Oshodi, we did it successfully; and it was hitch free.

Aim of the scheme

The scheme is about bringing orderliness into the public transportation system in the state. One will agree with me that in the past, as it relates to drivers and owners of vehicles, we found out that in Lagos, owners of vehicles do not know the driver handling their vehicle at a particular time. You have had cases of drivers handing over a vehicle to another driver without the consent of the owner. I know this because I was part of the enforcement team.

We have had cases where we impound a vehicle and in the process, the driver abandons the vehicle. The only person we see after weeks will be the owner; who would want to recover the vehicle.

Meanwhile, the driver that committed the offence had dissolved into the society. And another vehicle owner will employ him to drive another public bus. And this person will continue to commit the same offence. In Lagos, we have seen cases of someone with one-arm  and one-eye driving the yellow commercial buses pseudonym Danfo. With this training, orderliness, safety and security have returned to public transportation. When drivers know that they have record somewhere, if they violate any law, they could be easily apprehended; they will drive with care.

Number of people rehabilitated so far

The training institute will be five years old in August 2014. That is just one of the windows that bring drivers to the institute. We have other two windows. And the windows are: the mandatory, structured courses-where employers of drivers seek the institutions service to train his drivers-and the third level is the traffic offenders are referred to the institute.

And this is the window that is very open to all because anyone can violate the traffic law. Till date, we have rehabilitated 2, 500 drivers in the state both commercial and private vehicle operators. And when one is referred to the institution, we ensure that he or she is trained to know how not to commit such traffic offence again. And this represents both private car owners and professional drivers. That is the only avenue that has brought women to the institution. But men are the highest traffic offenders in the state.

Challenge/constraint

If you see anyone complaining, it was because we have failed to bend the rule. Many of the drivers don’t have drivers license and they want to be certified. And when they are not allowed to engage in the training, they offer bribe. But because we have trained our officials, they do reject the bribe. When one doesn’t have his driver’s license or a proof that he is processing it, he will be denied. It is time that Nigerians shunned cutting corners. The challenges we are facing in LASDRI centres are that drivers have not really turned up in the training. It is only when they visit the centres and the institution couldn’t cope with the population, that there can be need for more centres.

Re-certification exercise

For this, no fee is charged. But for the original certification course which the state government has subsidized, drivers are expected to pay N1, 000. And we have instructed the drivers to pay the fee in the designated banks through the counter or through Automated Teller Machine, ATM which they can swap in the institute. At the initial stage, the aim of the state governor was to train all drivers free. But we had to beg him before he accepted that fee should be attached. We started with N500.

Cases of second offender

At the end of last year, we compiled the list of multiple offenders and they were 250 drivers. They were not those that had come here for training. We are still compiling the list. We will be sending letters to them as a means of advising them on how they can be good drivers on the road. The reasons for these are based on attitudes.

Rickety vehicles

On our part, we are working on the drivers. One of the first courses that drivers are taught here is for them to know their responsibility-to the owner, passenger, other road users and their vehicle. We believe that when we train the drivers on the importance of driving sound vehicles, we won’t find rickety buses on the roads again. This is because they now know the hazard of driving rickety buses. We are all enforcing the traffic laws. Today, the number of rickety buses has reduced compared to what is experienced on the road few years ago. This isn’t the effort of one of the transport agency but the combination of all the agencies. And the effort of the agencies has brought orderliness. And I believe that we are moving towards a better transport service.

Driver’s license

It is not that LASDRI is asking for the card but we want to see the evidence that the person has paid the required fee. The process is in top gear. The reason why we are demanding for the card was that they don’t have driver’s license or they have expired license and they haven’t made any effort to renew it.

Fresher courses/capacity building for trainers

From the bases, some of the instructors were trained in United States of America, USA, India, Sweden and others. And internally, we organize training for them as well. The issue that we all must understand is that when LASDRI commenced operation, there wasn’t any reference point. There isn’t anywhere in the world where people that have already been licensed as drivers are made to return to the training institute for the purpose of retraining. We are now the reference point for people to learn. We have trained transport officials from Ghana. And in Nigeria, we have trained officials from Kwara, Osun and others.

Advice

For the employers of drivers, they must have attitudinal change towards drivers. They must know that sending their drivers to training will reduce the anticipated crashes to between 35 per cent and 75 per cent. They should see their drivers like other employees that are sent on capacity training.