2 months ago
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To ensure Nigeria’s dream of achieving a reliable database in the automotive industry, the Director, Niger State Motor Vehicle Administration Agency, Dr Bako Mohammed, has called for major reforms in the vehicle testing and licensing procedures in the country.
Bako stated this in a paper at a recent sensitisation webinar with the theme: “Standardisation and harmonisation of vehicle inspection testing and licensing: issues and the way forward”.
He stated that the best global practice is to have vehicle testing and licensing handled by the same agency, to ensure data reliability, and smoother vehicle administration, prevent revenue leakage, and boost internal revenue.
According to Bako, issues of proliferation of fake number plates, and vehicle documents, revenue leakages and insecurity across the states of the federation would be a thing of the past if these related responsibilities were brought under the same roof.
He said, “Rather than have these responsibilities domiciled in one department, the Nigerian situation has seen the establishment of different inspection and administration agencies, all working in silos and not synergizing, thereby, negating the intentions of safe roads and safer vehicles.”
He, therefore, called for a new statutory instrument that would make for the collapse of those two entities into one for the standardisation and harmonisation of testing and licensing of all forms and modes of vehicles in the country.
He observed that the absence of a national framework had led many of the states’ traffic inspection services to work at cross purposes, which had made achieving a national vehicle database difficult as many states’ VIS were practically inactive and inefficient.
Bako claimed that Niger had led in that regard, as the state promulgated a law in 2021 that sought to fuse the activities of those two agencies.
He stated that Niger was seamlessly implementing the law by bringing the inspection and licensing of vehicles in the state under one roof.
He added, “The forum of directors of vehicle inspection officers must serve as a peer review platform to ensure that all states in the country develop the right framework to regulate their operation.”
Earlier the National Chairman Conference of Directors/Chief Road Traffic Officers of the Federation, Dr Paul Bepeh, said the webinar was part of the measures to sensitise critical stakeholders to the October conference of the traffic Officers.
He added that the contributions at the webinar would form part of the input into the forthcoming conference.
Chairman Forum of Commissioners of Transportation of Nigeria, Gbenga Dairo, pledged the commitment of the respective supervisory authorities to support the DVIOs in achieving the task of making the roads across the country safer.
Dairo, represented by the secretary of the forum, Omale Omale, who is also the Benue State Commissioner for Power, Renewable Energy and Transportation, said that the need for unified testing and licensing of all vehicles cannot be overemphasised, as the country was burdened by the hydra-headed challenge of insecurity and other criminal activities.
