Shehu Mohammed and Nigeria’s Global Road Safety Moment

By Lawal Dahiru Mamman

When Wole Soyinka and a handful of visionaries helped lay the groundwork for the Federal Road Safety Corps, FRSC, in 1988, the mission was purely defensive. It was a desperate domestic response to the massive loss of life from road traffic crashes and violent attacks on major transport routes. At that point, this horrible phenomenon was called “slaughter on the highways.”

The idea that Nigeria would one day preach road safety doctrine to the rest of the world was not part of the plan. For decades, the global conversation around traffic safety in developing countries was stuck in the same lane.

It was all about what was missing. The only thing visible bacame crumbling roads, multiple potholes, weak enforcement, and rising body counts. Low- and middle-income countries were largely treated as recipients, not contributors — waiting for policy handouts and technical aid from the Global North, often regarded as the more advanced world region in terms of anything you can think of.

That script flipped in New York. Nigeria’s presence at the United Nations High-Level Meeting on Improving Global Road Safety was not that of a country simply taking a seat at the table among the comity of nations.

Representing President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the Corps Marshal of the Federal Road Safety Corps, Shehu Mohammed, addressed world leaders and road safety experts. It was a clear signal that the country is no longer content to ride shotgun on global road safety. Nigeria is stepping up to the wheel.

In his address, the Corps Marshal said, “Guided by the Marrakesh Declaration, Nigeria remains resolute in accelerating the implementation of the Global Plan for the Decade of Action for Road Safety…