FRSC’s Road Safety Blueprint Goes Beyond Nigeria, by Lawal Dahiru Mamman

FRSC’s Road Safety Blueprint Goes Beyond Nigeria

By Lawal Dahiru Mamman,

Some ties are not easily broken by time. Many countries share a history that continues to bind them together long after the ink has dried. Nigeria and Sierra Leone are a case in point.

Culturally and historically, both are English-speaking West African nations with a shared colonial background under Britain. There are also large populations of returnee ex-slaves, and centuries of migration. Many Sierra Leoneans trace their roots to Nigeria, and vice versa.

This is reflected in shared cultural elements like music, pidgin English, food, and strong diaspora links, one may say birds of a feather flocking together.

Diplomatically and politically, the two nations have also walked hand in hand. But perhaps the most telling example is in security and peacekeeping.

During the 1990s civil war in Sierra Leone, Nigeria went the extra mile as the backbone of Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) arm that helped bring the conflict between 1991 and 2002 to an end. Because of this, Sierra Leoneans still hold Nigeria in high esteem.

Today, both countries cooperate on counter-terrorism, maritime security in the Gulf of Guinea, and military training. A recent development shows this cooperation is now shifting gears into road safety and rightly so, because road safety does not recognise borders drawn on a map.

In an increasingly integrated West Africa, where ECOWAS promotes the free movement of goods and people, a highway hazard in Freetown can be a mirror image of a transport crisis in Abuja. Cross-border trade relies entirely on the safety, predictability, and administrative integrity of our shared transit…