The Ondo State Sector Commander, Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), Rotimi Adeleye, has said that the FRSC has received marching orders to protect corps members nationwide.
Adeleye said this when the state NYSC Coordinator, Mrs Grace Akpabio, paid an official visit to his office on Friday in Akure.
According to the commander, the directive came from the Corps Marshall, Boboye Oyeyemi, after he met with the Director-General of the scheme, Brig.-Gen. Shuaibu Ibrahim.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the NYSC director-general had visited Oyeyemi to solicit for assistance to curb unnecessary journeys embarked upon by corps members.
The visit was also aimed at mapping out strategies to end persistent accidents that had claimed the lives of some corps members.
Oyeyemi promised to visit the camp before the end of the ongoing orientation course, to sensitise corps members on the need to resist the urge to embark on unnecessary journeys.
The FRSC sector commander said that he had briefed his men to ensure that all corps members in the state were adequately monitored to ensure that no life was lost during the festive season and beyond.
He appealed to the NYSC coordinator to encourage the corps members to join first responders’ team so as to immediately report any untoward occurrence that could threaten human lives.
“I want to appeal to you to encourage your corps members to act as first responders immediately there is any traffic gridlock or accident.
“The NYSC management is worried that some of our children, who are serving the nation, are losing their precious lives to road traffic accidents, which could be averted,” he said.
Earlier, Akpabio had said that NYSC management had resolved to make the relationship between the two federal agencies more robust so as to achieve no loss of corps members’ lives.
Akpabio thanked the FRSC for the roles it had been playing in ensuring that corps members serving in the state received priority attention always.
The state coordinator promised to mobilize her field officers to address corps members during their weekly community development meetings not to travel late in the evening or overnight.
She urged the FRSC to always liaise with the various road transport unions to assist corps members to navigate the state rather than extort them.
“I want to enjoin you to encourage the transport unions not to take advantage of the corps members serving in the state to extort them, as the majority of them are visiting this part of the country for the first time,” she said.
Akpabio stressed that the scheme would be grateful to the FRSC if it could enforce the night travel ban on corps members and apprehend the recalcitrant ones.
NAN recalls that the NYSC had expressed concern over the rate at which corps members were losing their lives during needless trips.
