Need to Review Diver's Licensing Procedure in the Country

Background:
Road traffic accident remains a leading cause of trauma and admissions to the accidents and emergency units of most hospitals. Road traffic accidents continue to pose a problem in many places worldwide. Injuries and deaths resulting from road traffic accidents are on the rise annually.

Factors that contribute to high occurrences of road traffic accidents are largely preventable and they include bad roads, poor vehicular conditions recklessness on the part of the drivers, and neglect of traffic rules. Ranking high among these factors is the human element. Improperly educated drivers constitute a major road hazard on our roads. Neglect of traffic rules, recklessness, poor vehicular maintenance are all manifestations of inadequate driver education on road safety.

Sadly, the licensing procedure in the country leaves a lot to be desired. Observations indicate that all it takes for a person to acquire a driving licence in Nigeria today are: two passport photographs and the official fees. Once these two requirements are fulfilled the next day an applicant will definitely get a drivers licence, albeit through the back door. Nobody bothers about the driver’s driving ability and skills, hearing and visual acuity, general medical fitness and the ability of the driver to read and understand simple traffic codes which are critical elements in road safety.

Position of the Law on Licensing:
However, this a far cry from what the law provides, the position of the law on the issuance of driver’s licence are as follows:

Section 5 of the Federal Road Safety (Establishment) Act 2007 empowers the FRSC to make regulations as to the establishment, investigation and certification of driving schools, designing and producing driver’s licences among others. Pursuant to the said section the National Road Traffic Regulations 2004 was made.

Regulation 20(1) of the said Regulation empowers the Commission to establish model driving schools in each state of the Federation and the FCT and regulate the establishment and registration of private and government owned driving schools and shall set guidelines for the establishment of such driving schools.

Regulation 20(3) and (4) empowers the Commission to issue permits to such driving schools and to inspect from time to time all registered driving schools to ensure that they conform to standards specified by the Commission.

Regulation 22(2) provides that an applicant for fresh driver’s licence shall furnish evidence of training at an approved driving school and a learner’s permit and shall be accompanied with a certificate of visual acuity test and general medical fitness test as prescribed in Regulation 24(6).

Regulation 23(1) requires that an application for the issue or re-issue of a drivers
licence shall be accompanied by three copies of a recent passport photograph (which shall be printed from the same negative) of the head, full face, and shoulders of the applicant, the copy shall be certified as a true resemblance of the applicant by a Vehicle Inspection Officer.

Regulation 24(1) and 26(1) requires that before issuing a driver’s licence, the applicant must pass a driving test conducted by a Vehicle Inspection Officer, to show that he is capable of fully controlling a motor vehicle of the type and group for which he applied. The Commission shall not issue a driver’s licence to an applicant unless such applicant furnishes certificates of vision acuity and general fitness from any government hospital.

International Best Practices:
A critical analysis of the foregoing provisions of the law indicates that the Federal Road Safety Commission that was mandated by the National Assembly to handle issues of road safety has little or no role to play in the education, testing and issuance of driver’s licence apart from production of the driver’s licence. This constitutes a major hindrance to adequate monitoring and supervision of the issuance of driver’s licence by the Commission and has resulted in flagrant disregard of statutory provisions on licensing.

To correct this anomaly, it is necessary to review what other nations faced with similar challenges has done in the past to reduce the incidence of high accident rates on their highways. In 2002, an initiative was taken to study the quality of driver examination in Finland, Sweden, Norway and Northern Ireland. The preliminary results showed that there are both similarities and differences between the countries regarding the driving-license test. The study however showed that all countries require a candidate to pass a theoretical test before taking the practical test. In addition to this, Finland, Sweden and Norway require a candidate to take certain courses or a minimum number of hours of practical training before taking the driving test.

The main objective of driving tests is concerned with road safety, which means that those who lack the required competence to drive in traffic are not permitted to enter the system. Another function of the driving tests is to influence the training undertaken by learner drivers. The driving-license test is the only way to verify that the test-takers have acquired the knowledge and abilities specified in the curriculum. As a result of the restricted use of compulsory education, the quality of the student evaluation depends solely on the quality of the tests. Thus, the demands on the tests in terms of reliability and validity ought to be high.

The idea behind driver education is to provide the student with sufficient education to guarantee that he or she possesses the necessary attitudes, knowledge and abilities to pass the theoretical and practical test. During the last few years, a number of countries have made attempts to improve the students’ attitudes and capacity for self-evaluation by emphasising such areas in the curriculum. Since it is difficult to evaluate these aspects through testing, the best way for the system owner to affect and evaluate the students’ attitudes is through compulsory education.

Conclusions:
The conclusion of the study was that compulsory driver education combined with a theoretical and practical test of high quality constitutes the optimal approach for the system owners in terms of verifying that the student has reached the level of competence specified in the curriculum.

In order to further reduce the death toll on our highways it becomes imperative that we must equally adopt these international best practices that other countries have employed successfully to keep their accident rates on the highways low. Persons authorised to drive motor vehicles on our highways needs to be adequately educated on the necessary skills, attitudes and abilities they need to acquire before being allowed to drive on the highways.


The Commission should therefore be the sole authority responsible for issuing driver’s licence, developing the curriculum for drivers’ education, testing of applicants for driver’s licence, conducting medical fitness tests and handling everything necessary and incidental to granting an application for a driver’s licence. This must of necessity include capturing the image of the applicant or photograph onto the licence. This aspect incidentally is the main source of non-compliance as applicants are only required to present their passport photographs and the fees payable and a licence is automatically issued. The Commission therefore must be given the opportunity of physical assessment of the applicant before issuing him a driver’s licence.