Following the recent passage of the Bill on the establishment of armed squads for the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) which scaled the second reading at the House of Representatives, there have been various reactions from members of the public criticizing the move.

Although the reactions which bordered more on public apprehension on the necessity of the Marshals of the FRSC carrying arms for operational activities, it seems that the opinions have deviated from the real intentions of the proposed Bill.

It should be recalled that the founding fathers of the FRSC in their original conception never gave thought to the ideas of Marshals bearing arms while performing their operational duties of keeping the roads safe. Rather, they conceived FRSC as an ideal civil organization with adequate persuasive capabilities by its personnel who would only resort to enforcement as the last option in effecting attitudinal changes in drivers.

That was why, according to the first Chairman of the FRSC Board, Professor Wole Soyinka, "FRSC is a preventive medicine meant to avert road traffic crashes from occuring." The Nobel Laurel further stated, "Drivers obey the Road Marshals not out of fear of the guns they carry, but out of the conviction in the rightness of their actions." 

In other words, Marshals are obeyed by drivers not for the fears of the riffles they carry but because they understand that whatever action they take on them was driven by their good intentions and the goodwill they have for the drivers in keeping them safe.

With this kind of mindset, it's not surprising that the FRSC personnel have continued to rely on education and enlightenment as potent tools for attitudinal changes instead of enforcement. That was also why the original enabling laws of the FRSC as enshrined in the Decree 45 of 1988 never made provisions for the FRSC personnel to bear arms. 

However, 5 years into its operations, the Corps was faced with so many cases of violent attacks on its armless personnel and buildings through which some officers lost their lives and property of the Corps willfully destroyed by the hoodlums.

Consequently, amendment was introduced to the original Decree in 1992 which was otherwise referred to as Amendment Laws of 1992 empowering members of the Corps to bear arms for self defence. It was the combination of the original Decree 45 of 1988 which was the enabling law and its amendment in 1992 through Decree 35 that later became the Establishment Act 2007 under the civil rule with clear provisions that empower the FRSC to bear arms as stated in section 19.

Despite the obvious provision of the power to bear arms in the FRSC Established Act however, and the fact that some senior officers and Marshals had actually gone for arms training at the various military formations across the country including the construction of an armoury at the FRSC National Headquarters Abuja, arms were never physically provided for use by Marshals till date. 

This could be attributed to the initial value orientation of the founding fathers, hesitation by the successive Managements to vigorously pursue the policy and the reality that members of the public could not actually come to terms with the ideas of the Marshals bearing arms, there has been stalemate in the questions of the FRSC bearing arms since the past 36 years of its existence until the recent move through the proposed Bill to amend the FRSC Establishment Act as sponsored by some members. For the avoidance of doubt, the proposed Bill made provisions for the establishment of the armed squads to play the specific role of guarding the Corps' property and installations.  

However, the spontaneous reactions against the proposal, though not entirely new and bordered on fears for human safety in the use of the arms by the Marshals needs some clarification for public enlightenment.

As the lead agency for road traffic management and safety administration in the country is having presence in all the 774 Local Government Areas across the country with functional commands and patrol equipment in all the 36 States of the Federation including Abuja which also hosts the National Headquarters.

The Corps also has 6 Zonal command headquarters and over 200 unit commands as well as outposts, Academy and training schools; number plate production centres and driver's license print farms and centres spread across the nook and crannies of the country. Moreover, most of these operational areas also host vital installations and technological equipment that attract hoodlums and in fact, suffered destruction at all the times that the Corps or the nation experienced some crisis in the past.

While it's evident that the Corps has been able to faithfully operate successfully on the nation's roads in its 36 years of existence without recourse to arms, our experiences over this period shows vulnerability to violent attacks by hoodlums who without provocation, targeted the vital installations and office equipment with some of our personnel losing their lives defencelessly in the process.

Our reliance on other armed groups for cover at such critical periods further exposed our vulnerability as we experienced during the last ENDSARS violent attacks when we suffered huge losses from the invasion of our office complex by hoodlums who took advantage of our lack of arms protection to raze down some of the buildings across the federation. 

One must state that no matter how civil a nation or its agencies may want to portray themselves, no government would tolerate a situation where non state actors could take advantage of any agency's vulnerability to threat the way FRSC has been subjected to over the years, and why the proposal to have some armed a squads established to should enjoy our collective endorsement and support rather than condemnation arising from misunderstanding of the good intentions as some commentators have done. 

For the avoidance of doubt, the proposed amendment is not introducing arms bearing by the FRSC as a new item, because that's already embedded in the extant FRSC Established Act 2007. Rather, the new amendment only seeks to restrict the use of such arms to the special squads that will be responsible for guarding and protecting the Corps' vital installations spread across the country and the personnel we cannot continue to rely on others to do for us whenever we are faced with such situations especially that the Corps can effectively do that with trained personnel.

In conclusion, FRSC has through its diligence and commitment to public safety over the years been able to demonstrate that it can be trusted with sensitive public responsibility.

We have also remained focused on building trust with veritable stakeholders in civil society organizations in and outside Nigeria that the questions of misusing such arms instead of using them for the purposes they are meant for by the laws as some people fear would not even arise as we will continue to hold fast unto the earned public trust in delivering safety to the people of Nigeria with the assurances that our personnel and vital installations and facilities are not under constant threats from non state actors bent on causing instability in the system.

Assistant Corps Marshal Olusegun Ogungbemide, mni is the Corps Public Education Officer at the FRSC National Headquarters Abuja.