Faded Number Plates and Lessons For FRSC

As far as the controversies over faded number plates are concerned, there are lessons for men of the Federal Roads Safety Corps (FRSC) to learn from sister agencies; SUNNY IDACHABA writes.

For a while now, the Federal Roads Safety Commission (FRSC) has been in the news for right or wrong reasons. Its personnel have been in altercation with road users over faded number plates with the latter resisting their vehicles from being impounded despite official directives. 

It could be recalled that the former Corps Marshal,  Boboye Oyeyemi while in that capacity directed that all vehicles with faded plate numbers or those whose numbers be impounded while the respective car owners would pay a fine before replacement. According to the text of the directive, any plate number whose inscription cannot be read six metres away is considered faded. 

The FRSC authorities, no doubt, have their reason for giving such orders. First, it borders in security and secondly, it is a source of revenue generation for the commission. Good as these intentions were, in almost every state across the country, implementing the policy often met a brick wall as it constantly led to altercations between the ‘implementers’ and road users. 

To the road users, it is not their fault that those plates are faded and, therefore, should not take the punishment. To others, it is the responsibility of the commission which produced them to replace all such rather than vehicle owners taking responsibility for replacement.

In Lagos, for instance, the matter assumed a war-like dimension between FRSC men and vehicle owners often resulting in a near-fisty-cuffs. In the process, sometimes, instead of the traffic to flow without hindrance, the gridlock associated with the implementation of the order became a source of concern.

Worried by the development probably as a result of his own experiences, a road user, Chinwike Chamberlain Ezebube, approached a Lagos High Court seeking an order to declare the impounding of vehicles by FRSC as illegal.