By:FRANK BOYEDE (Senior Correspondent)
The Federal Road Safety Commission has instituted a quarterly award, to compensate field officers, who refuse to accept bribe from motorists. Mr. Nseobong Akpabio, Assistant Corp Marshal, Zonal Commanding Officer, FRSC, Lagos State Command, disclosed this to Motoring World in a telephone interview on Saturday.
According to him, the award, next of which holds on 14th of June 2016, is given quarterly to patrol teams, whose officers, succeed in issuing fine tickets to motorists, who attempt to bribe them.
“I have to encourage my personnel to do their job professionally,” said Akpabio. “For if you collect bribe, you are dismissed.
“But the question came to me: What if my personnel refuses bribery? Shouldn’t there be a way of celebrating them? So we thought of initiating an award for patrol team, who, during patrol, refuse bribe from motorists and, being an offence, issue fine tickets to such erring motorists. That was how the quarterly award came into being.
“And I can tell you, it has yielded positive results. My personnel now realize that there is compensation for doing their job professionally, just as there is punishment for going against laid down rules.”
Akpabio, therefore, appealed to motorists to always have it in mind that whatever FRSC is doing is to ensure that they are not only safe, but do not constitute danger to other road users.
“And in the process of carrying out our duties,” he warned, “we will not tolerate any form of motoring indiscipline, not matter how highly placed the culprit might be.
“Even if you are driving a new vehicle on bad or good road, it is the attitude of the driver that most of the time leads to occurrence of road accidents.”