But it would seem that the Kano Road Traffic Authority (KAROTA) and its corps are bent on extorting money from road users, and are by implication becoming punitive rather than corrective. They are also becoming a source of road accidents rather than assisting in preventing accidents.
As 2013 comes to an end, and as we are taking stock of the good, the bad, and the ugly things that happened over the year, we need to reflect on the need to make our roads safer and the users happier. It is for the purpose of improving safety on our roads that KAROTA was established in Kano State during the second coming of Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso.
However, it is on record that as a result of overzealousness of its corp members, the institution has contributed to road accidents in Kano State. In their bid to arrest motorists and impose fine on them, for a perceived traffic offence, the corps chase moving vehicles to the point of causing accidents and in some cases leading to serious injuries or outright loss of lives.
Cases in reference include the Yankaba accident in which a whole family was devastated by the accident caused by a KAROTA official who illegally drove the vehicle he apprehended, as well as the Mariri incident, in which a bus was chased by KAROTA corps, until the bus tumbled and killed some of its passengers.
Throughout the year 2013, the air waves of Kano are replete with complaints of KAROTA corps and their excesses. Often, drivers complain of exorbitant fines, which are higher than those charged by any of the federal agencies that supervise road safety.
There are allegations that trade and commerce are on the decline in Kano since KAROTA took over Kano main roads. Whether or not the allegations are true, one thing is certain about the excesses on the KAROTA-working guidelines. This is the ruling that whenever a road user is apprehended over the weekend, his vehicle will be grounded until Monday, when the driver will be required to make bank payments before his vehicle is released to him. There are great deals of economic, social, psychological, and moral negatives in this operational guideline.
Let us examine this ruling using a low income earner such as a commercial tricycle operator, who is expected to make retirements to the owner of the vehicle on daily basis. Assuming this road user is apprehended for crossing over white line in a road junction, having calculated that time will not permit him to cross the junction from the time the traffic light showed him yellow light. If this road user is apprehended by a KAROTA Corps member for his decision not to beat the traffic light and taking the safer measure of stopping, even though he has crossed the white line; and assuming this happened around four o’clock on a Friday evening, the KAROTA guideline requires that his vehicle will be grounded until Monday, say by ten o’clock, for he needs a minimum of two hours to collect a bank teller from the KAROTA headquarters and effect payment in the bank. Now for such a person, whose survival and of course that of his family and dependents, this amounts to arresting him for a minimum of 64 hours, as against the constitutional provision of a minimum of 48 hours.
On the economic front, this victim will loose almost four days working hours, in addition to whatever fine he pays (some say a minimum of N20,000). Needless to say, this is counter-productive as far as government’s aim of economic empowerment of its people is concerned.
On the social front, the victim suffers the social stigma that there is in the ‘’arrest’’ of persons irrespective of the degree or intention behind the offence. This will automatically lead to psychological depression, especially where, as is often the case, one meets with unruly officer corps. And on the moral front, one questions the whole idea of traffic rules, especially if one considers that political leaders who move in convoys, security personnel, police vans that carry money from one bank to another, among others, break all the road traffic rules with impunity.
It leaves one with the conclusion that the rules are meant for the weak and the poor as measures of punishment, as well as means of extorting and further impoverishing them.
Someone somewhere needs to come to the aid of the weak segments of the society by making institutions like KAROTA to be more humane in their operations. The Civil Societies, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), and the state House of Assembly, have the responsibility of checking such excesses.
Dr Dukawa is of the Political Science Department, Bayero University Kano (BUK).
