News
Road Carnage: Oyo Govt. Trains 5000 Public, Private Drivers
• To enforce training for all drivers every 2 years
Oyo State government has commenced training for over five thousand public and private drivers in the state to reduce to the barest minimum road carnages that have caused loss of lives on the roads.
The government, has also been reported to have put all machineries in motion to enforce the training of all road users every two years on traffic regulations and possible guides against accidents.
This was disclosed by the State’s Head of Service, Mrs Ololade Agboola at the commissioning of the State’s Drivers’ Institute and flag-off of training of 5000 drivers in Ibadan on Monday.
Mrs Agboola who was represented by the Director, Vehicle Inspection Services, Mr James Opalola underscored the importance of training and retraining of drivers in order to curb the incessant cases of avoidable vehicular accidents on major roads.
The exercise which was conducted by Oyo State Drivers’ Institute and Institute of Road Transport Workers would see to training and retraining of both private and commercial drivers in the State on road safety, vehicle literacy and other details regarding the highways.
In her address, Agboola said “with the training in place, Oyo State will take the lead in the 2019 National Road Safety Strategy, thereby restoring the State back to its Pace Setter status because similar programmes are being organized in other neighboring States.
“This exercise will go along way to curb the incessant road carnages that have caused untold hardship to many families over the loss of their loved ones to avoidable vehicular accidents and prepare road users to be ready for challenges that might lay ahead on the road and take adequate precautions.
“The State will also start soon a compulsory training for all road users, whether public or private which will take place every two years and will attract a tone fee,” he added.
In addition, the State Sector Commander, Federal Road Safety Corps, who was represented by Mrs. Abimbola Afolabi, commended the giant stride taken by the State Government to establish the Drivers’ Institute which will therefore go a long way to reduce road Carnage as being experienced currently.
In his remarks, the General Manager, Oyo State Drivers’Institute, Engineer Victor Ogunranti, reiterated the essence of establishing the Institute by the State Government which is to train and retrain drivers in the State for better performance on the road so as to reduce the number of accidents on the highways.
Ogunranti reiterated that the programme which was a Public-Private Partnership form along with the Institute of Road Transport Workers, would engage different Stakeholders in the transport sector to continually train drivers, confirming that the training would be in two forms, namely the specialized one and the mandatory one which everybody must attend every two years and would attract a token fee.
He said the training would capture details of every participant and at the end of the training, certificates and ID Cards will be issued to participants.
Mr Rashidi Olokode, the Director, Institute of Road Transport Workers, described the partnership with the Oyo State Drivers’ Institute as a Scheme that will fill two vacuums in the transport sector which is the vacuum of knowledge and that of social benefits. According to him, participants will be impacted with knowledge and also benefit in the Micro-bus empowerment Scheme where they’ll be given seven(7) sitter buses on higher purchase after meeting the necessary requirements and they are expected to pay back the money after two years.
Dangote Petroleum Refinery has made headlines by announcing a further reduction in the price of diesel, dropping it from ₦1200 to ₦1000 naira per litre.
The refinery’s decision comes on the heels of its recent supply at a significantly reduced price of ₦1200 per litre, which was introduced three weeks ago, signifying a remarkable 30 per cent decrease from the previous market price of approximately ₦1600 per litre.
This substantial reduction in diesel prices at Dangote Petroleum Refinery is expected to reiterate positively throughout various sectors of the economy, potentially serving as a catalyst in alleviating the persistently high inflation rate in the country.
In a statement last week, Aliko Dangote, Africa’s wealthiest individual and the owner of the refinery, expressed his optimism regarding the potential impact of the price reduction on inflation in Nigeria.
“I believe that we are on the right track. I believe Nigerians have been patient, and I also believe that a lot of goodies will now come through. There’s quite a lot of improvement because if you look at it, one of the major issues that we’ve had was the naira devaluation that has gone very aggressively up to about ₦1900,” he remarked.
As anticipation builds around the implications of this move by Dangote Petroleum Refinery, stakeholders and consumers alike remain hopeful for the positive effects it could bring to the Nigerian economy in the coming months.
More than 50,000 Russian military personnel have died during the Ukraine conflict, the BBC reported Wednesday, citing its own reporters, independent media group Mediazona and volunteers.
They found that more than 27,300 Russian soldiers died during the second year of the war, a 25-percent increase on the first year.
BBC Russian, Mediazona and volunteers have been counting deaths since February 2022, using open-source information from official reports and the media, as well as using satellite images of Russian cemeteries to estimate the number of new graves.
The figure of more than 50,000 is eight times higher than the official toll acknowledged by Moscow in September 2022. It does not include deaths of militia in Donetsk and Lugansk in eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine said in February that it had lost 31,000 soldiers, but that figure is also likely to be significantly lower than the true toll.
Russian losses spiked in January 2023 as it launched a large-scale offensive in Donetsk and again months later last year during the battle for the city of Bakhmut.
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a “special military operation” at dawn on February 24, 2022, which has since turned into a bloody and attritional war, isolating Russia from the Western world.
Responding to the report, the Kremlin said it did not disclose any information on military deaths and casualties, which falls under the remit of the defence ministry.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov added official secrets laws and those covering what Russia calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine meant it was “absolutely understandable” that the ministry did not release the figures.
The National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has disclosed that 95 million Nigerians need to enroll for the National Identification Number (NIN) to meet its target of 200 million enrollments by 2025.
Kayode Adegoke, Head of Corporate Communications at NIMC, emphasised the importance of this enrollment during an interview on X over the weekend.
He stated, “For NIMC to meet the 200 million target by 2025, 95 million Nigerians need to register for the NIN.”
Adegoke revealed that over 105 million NINs have been issued to Nigerians and legal residents so far.
He assured Nigerians of the commission’s commitment, saying, “We want to assure Nigerians that within the next one or two years, we will reach our target of enrolling all Nigerians.”
“The NIN serves as a unique identifier for each citizen and has become increasingly important for various government initiatives aimed at improving security, governance, and service delivery.”
Adegoke highlighted the efforts to streamline the modification and enrollment processes under the leadership of Abisoye Coker, the director-general of NIMC. He announced the development of a self-service platform, allowing Nigerians to make necessary modifications such as changing names, dates of birth, email addresses, and phone numbers from anywhere, using different devices.
Emphasising the convenience of the self-service modification portal, Adegoke encouraged Nigerians to utilize this innovative solution.
He noted the evolution of the process, citing the past requirement for applicants to visit NIMC offices for data corrections.
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