The Corps Marshal, Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), Shehu Mohammed, has ordered the activation of the penalty points system to strengthen compliance with traffic regulations.
The Corps’ Public Relations Officer, Olusegun Ogungbemide, in a statement on Monday, said the system is designed to track and penalize drivers who commit traffic offences, with the goal of reducing road traffic crashes and promoting safe driving practices.
The penalty points system is a proven method of enforcing traffic laws, as it assigns points to drivers for various traffic offences. When a driver accumulates a certain number of points, he becomes liable to penalties such as warning, licence suspension or complete withdrawal of the licence.
According to the Points System, drivers who accumulate between 10-14 points will receive a warning notification signifying that the driver should desist henceforth from violating traffic regulations. When the driver goes ahead to accumulate between 15-20 points, his/her drivers’ licence will be suspended, signifying a temporary withdrawal of rights to drive in Nigeria. However, the drivers licence finally gets withdrawn when the driver accumulates 21 points, indicating that the driver’s right to drive on Nigerian roads is totally taken away or denied.
Corps Marshal Mohammed gave examples of traffic offences in Nigeria and their corresponding penalty points, which include: driving without a valid driver’s license which accrues 10 penalty points, and a ₦10,000 fine; speed limit violation and driving under the influence of alcohol both attract 5 penalty points and a ₦5,000 fine each, while dangerous driving accrues 10 penalty points and a N50,000 fine.
The FRSC boss disclosed that in addition to the various sanctions associated to the aforementioned accrued points, the penalty points will also form part of the record to be forwarded to countries demanding for driving history/extract of Nigerian drivers applying to drive in foreign land.
“All these are determined efforts of the Corps to engender sanity and reduce fatalities on our roads”, Mohammed said.
