The Federal Government is collaborating with Diageo, a global beverage firm, and the United Nations Institute for Training and Research on a series of major road safety events to reduce traffic deaths and injuries, as well as improve road safety across the country.
As part of the collaboration, the parties have renewed a three-year partnership agreement that will further boost road safety programmes in Nigeria.
The Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, signed the partnership on behalf of the Federal Government at a recent conference in Abuja, which had about 100 local and international industry experts.
Participants at the conference discussed solutions and shared best practices on road safety legislation and regulation that would help address the issues of road safety in Nigeria.
Some of the figures released at the conference showed that there are 5,791,446 registered cars on roads in Nigeria and in 2013 the World Health Organisation estimated that around 35,641 lives were lost due to weak road safety laws on risk factors such as speed, drink-driving, seat-belts and child restraints.
It was stated that globally, road crashes were the ninth leading cause of death across all age groups and was a major cause of death among young people between the age of 15 to 29, costing governments approximately three per cent of Gross Domestic Product on average (WHO, 2015).
On what the United Nations was doing to help address the issue, the Division Director at UNITAR, Alex Mejia, said, “With the support of Diageo, we have organised four global events and five country events in Africa, Latin America and Asia.
“We are very proud of this partnership, which aims to improve the capacity of public and civil entities involved in road safety across the world, especially in countries with a high incidence of road accidents and injuries.”
On his part, the Managing Director, Diageo Guinness Nigeria, Baker Magunda, said, “I am proud of our partnership with UNITAR and the progress we have made and are continuing to make to effectively address the issues of road safety, particularly drinking and driving in Nigeria and across the globe.”