PRO says there is no immediate plan for officials to carry guns

On December 4, 2016, news of the Federal Government granting the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) approval to carry arms flooded the Internet.

According to Channels TV, the agency is set to start bearing arms as a result of theintentional violence against road safety officials by motorists, which had lead to the loss of over 70 lives in 2016.

In an accompanying video, the Corp Marshal and Chief Executive of FRSC, Boboye Oyeyemi, reveals that 5,000 personnel have been trained, adding that he was "just waiting for the revalidation of the earlier approval."

ALSO READ: FRSC gets FG's approval to bear arms after losing 70 personnel in 1 yr

This earned the agency a lot of backlash from social media, as a lot of people felt the road safety agency had no business with arms.

Now, Bisi Kazeem, the FRSC Head of Media Relations, has released a statement asking people to ignore these reports that were circulated by some “irresponsible” people.

According to him, “the Corps Marshal was lamenting the recent findings that 70 marshals lost their lives this year alone to some outlawed motorists.

He then stated that such a high number of losses could have been avoided if FRSC personnel were carrying arms as allowed by the law.

But he quickly added that there is no immediate plan to implement the law allowing officials to carry arms."

"It’s unfortunate that some wicked people now took that to mean that he said officials are now being armed. It’s a figment of their imagination," he added.

In response to the training of FRSC officials on arms, he said, “We’ve been undergoing such trainings on regular intervals since 1992 when Ibrahim Babangida was in office. But we have never put the exercise in general practice of our operation and we have no plans of implementing it in the nearest future.”

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