By ADEDOKUN THEOPHILUS
On Tuesday, December 24, the Kano State Sector Commander of the Federal Road Safety Corps, Umar Matazu said that road crashes and accidents claim more lives than terrorism and banditry combined.
During a courtesy visit to the leadership of the State’s Chapter of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, Matazu decried that the fatalities and mortalities recorded from auto crashes are incredibly high when compared with figures of banditry and insurgency-related violence.
According to him, “The number of deaths caused by road traffic accidents far exceeds those caused by terrorism, banditry, and other criminal activities.
“You rarely see an attack killing more than 10 people, but in a traffic crash, it is not uncommon to lose over 40 lives. From October to date, the number of fatalities from road traffic accidents is higher than those caused by terrorists or bandits.”
Contrary to the claim of the Kano State FRSC boss that the number of deaths recorded from auto crashes is much more than terrorism and banditry-induced mortality, statistics show an increment.
To ascertain this claim, The Explainer used Data gathered from the National Bureau of Statistics, the Federal Road Safety Corps and the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) to fact-check Matazu’s claim.
16 Nigerians Die Every Day in Road Crashes
A way to weigh the claim is through a comparative analysis of the number of deaths recorded from auto crashes and terrorism in the last five years. This data covers incidents of road traffic crashes and mortality between 2020 and 2023. The 2024 report was not included because the Federal Road Safety Corps had not provided comprehensive data at the time of analysis. This data was collated from the corps’ Statistical Digests and Annual Reports. Archived here and here.
Available data showed that between January 2020 and December of that year, 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. Moreover, this significant reduction is also reflected in the rate of mortality and injury.
Records showed that 33,766 victims sustained injuries while 5,248 individuals died from the accidents. It further explained that these crashes were mainly caused by speed violations, overloading, driving under the influence, continuous night journeys leading to fatigue, dangerous driving, wrongful overtaking, and tyre bursts due to worn-out and expiration.
ALSO READ: FACT CHECK: Has Burkina Faso Paid Off Its National Debt?
The Trend of Deaths From Terrorism and Banditry in Four Years
Data obtained from a global think tank, the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED) is used for analysis by The Explainer. This data showed the number of violent attacks by non-state actors targeting civilians like banditry and terrorism.
It includes deaths recorded from attacks, air drone strikes, armed clashes, grenades and government regains territories.
Others are non-state actors overtaking territory, shellings, artilleries, missile attacks, Remote explosives, landmines and improvised explosive devices (IED).
The Explainer analysis revealed that 8,200 Nigerians died from armed violence attacks in 2020. It showed that attacks, armed clashes and air drone strikes took the lion’s share with 2,557; 1,540; and 3,720 mortalities respectively.
Others include government regain territory (1), Grenade (0), Non-state actor overtakes territory (176), Shelling/artillery/missile attack (176), Suicide bomb (22), Remote explosive/landmine/IED (184).
Nigeria experienced an all-time increment within the period of study in 2021 with a 13,055 death toll. Attacks, armed clashes, and air drone strikes remained the three leading causes with 6,263; 5,538 and 913 deaths respectively.
Although there was a significant reduction in deaths recorded from these incidents in 2022; 10,670 people lost their lives to banditry and terrorism-related attacks. As usual, attacks (3,709), air drone strikes (1,535) and armed clashes (5,309) significantly contributed to these mortalities.
In a similar suite in 2023, there is a significant reduction in mortality from armed violence. Data showed that 8,496 lives were lost.
Also, attacks took 2,691 lives while air drone strikes and armed clashes caused 1,351 and 4,193 mortalities each. Lives were also lost to remote explosions, grenades and landmines.
Further analysis showed that 40,421 lives were lost between the years of study. This means that an average of 27 lives are lost to armed banditry daily.
