The Economic Community of West African States has advocated an effective and efficient road transport system in the region.

The Commissioner in charge of Infrastructure at the ECOWAS Commission, Mr Pathe Gueye, at the validation workshop for the draft road safety policy for the ECOWAS region held in Lagos, said there was the need for harmonisation of the highway design codes in the ECOWAS region.

He said, “Road Safety is an important element for the security in West Africa and the World. In 2016, the World Health Organisation in its report informed us that there were more than 6,000 cases of road accident deaths. If we bring that to a population of 1,000 inhabitants, we are about an average of three to five death ratio. This ratio is higher compared to the ratio given by the WHO and it is five times higher than what is obtainable in Europe.

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“This shows that the necessity for West Africa to take the responsibility of road safety issue seriously is very important. We have also observed that those who are involved in those road accidents are aged between 16 and 25, which constitute the youths of our sub-region.

“Therefore, the ECOWAS Commission cannot fold its arms and continue to watch our youths die. There is the need to harmonise a framework so that the solution can be sought to improve on this situation.”

 The Deputy Corps Marshall, Operations, Federal Road Safety Commission, Mr Kayode Fanola, said Nigeria would benefit from the ECOWAS draft policy on road safety.

“We have made inputs into the draft policy where we articulated what Nigeria has done, the legislation we have and the Nigerian Road Safety Strategy was also highlighted,” he said.