The Corps Marshal, Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), Dr Boboye Oyeyemi, has said the organisation will from Monday, begin to clamp down on wanted traffic offenders who have yet to effect payment of fines.
In a statement issued by the Corps Public Education Officer (CPEO), Assistant Corps Marshal (ACM) Bisi Kazeem, Oyeyemi said the corps would go after wanted offenders as from Monday, Jan. 25.
Oyeyemi had on Friday Jan. 22 held the year’s first “Strategy Session of Zonal Commanding Officers and Sector Commanders on Zero Tolerance to Crashes in 2021’’.
The FRSC boss said the offenders, who were already declared wanted after exceeding the days of grace period from the dates of arrests and issuance of Notice of Offence tickets, were now being looked for by the corps operatives.
He noted that offenders who voluntarily reported at any of the FRSC offices nationwide and made payment would not be prosecuted.
He said names of the offenders would be uploaded from the Corps Duty Room Information and Management System (DRIMS) in the next 48 hours.
“It follows that beginning from Monday, Jan 25, 2021 all commands shall commence the arrest of the targeted offenders, which will include home arrest where necessary, deploying the New Vehicle Identification System (NVIS).
“Offenders with genuine handicaps will be handled with compassion that the case deserves,” he said.
Oyeyemi said that some offenders booked to pay fines and given dates to report ended up not showing up as their confiscated documents might not be important to them.
“For instance, a document such as vehicle licence, which is not expensive to procure, could be forfeited by any offender when he or she is fined N15,000 for committing a traffic offence and the offender can easily afford another document.
“Such offenders would be declared wanted because we have all the information we need to arrest and we will go after them. That is what we are set to do as we will upload their names from the DRIMS, ” he said.
Oyeyemi said that the corps had re-engineered the NVIS such that the data had become more responsive to the detection of foul practices.
He, however, noted that a total of 279 stolen vehicles were recovered in the past six years and handed over to the appropriate authorities for further investigation.
He, therefore, urged stakeholders in the vehicle registration process to ensure that the required detailed information about vehicle ownership was obtained before issuance of number plates. (NAN)