A TOTAL OF 411 lives were lost to fuel scooping from fallen tankers while 5,010 deaths were recorded from road traffic crashes in 2024.
Speaking on Monday, January 27, the Corps Marshall of the Federal Road Safety Corps, (FRSC), Malam Shehu Mohammed, disclosed this while addressing newsmen on the 2024 special patrol operations in Abuja.
He explained that the 411 deaths, representing 7.6 per cent of the total deaths, were not primarily caused by the crashes.
Stressing that the analysis of the corps’ annual performance indicated a drastic reduction in Road Traffic Crashes (RTCs), Mohammed further clarified that from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, 2024, a total of 9,570 RTCs were recorded nationwide.
He stressed that against 10,617 Road Traffic Crashes recorded in 2023, a tremendous reduction of 10 per cent was recorded.
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According to him, there were 31,154 injuries in 2024 compared to 31,874 in 2023, which is a 2% drop.
“There was a 7% increase in fatalities,” he said, adding that 5,421 individuals were murdered in 2024 compared to 5,081 in 2023.
Noting that 21, 580 traffic offenders were arrested by the Federal Road Safety Corps, FRSC, between January and December 2024 across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Mohammed stated that the corps recorded a reduction in the number of offenders in 2024 as against 29,220 within the same period in 2023.
He explained, “This signifies a 26 per cent increase in compliance to traffic rules and regulations.”
The FRSC Corps Marshal stated that the total number of offences committed stood at 25,942, representing 23.5 per cent reduction in traffic law violations compared to the data of the same period in 2023.
The Explainer reported that fire from a fuel truck explosion razed over 20 shops and injured 69 persons. Hours after the incident, the death toll of the fuel tanker explosion increased to 98 in Niger State.
The Director General of the Niger State Emergency Management Agency, Abdullahi Baba-Arah, stated thison Monday, January 20.
He said, “More deaths have been recorded from the fire incident. The latest figure is now 98 deaths, 69 injured and 20 shops burnt down.”
Similarly, The Explainer showed that between January and December 2020, 11,875 crashes were recorded across the thirty-six states and FCT.
Although 33,311 persons sustained various degrees of injury, a death toll of 5,574 persons was recorded.
That is not all, the number of crashes surged a little bit to 13,027 in 2021 with 38,073 injuries recorded and 6,205 persons killed in different incidents.
Like the previous years, the number of road and traffic crashes did not reduce as the number of road crashes recorded was rounded to 13,656 in 2022. The number of road users who sustained various degrees of injury increased to 38,930 while 6,456 deaths were recorded.
The increasing number of road traffic crashes took a u-turn in 2023 as cases of auto crashes tremendously reduced to 11,488.
