A bill to amend the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) Act 2007 passed Second reading in the House of Representatives on Thursday, October 10, 2024. The bill is sponsored by Hon. Olaide Lateef Mohammed (APC; Oyo) and was referred to the Committee on FRSC for further legislative action. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Among other issues, the bill seeks to establish\na Road Safety Special Armed Squad for the Corps and improve the benefits for\nits personnel on the rank of deputy Corps Marshal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The bill amends section 7 of the principal Act\non the Appointment of the Corps Marshal of the FRSC to specify that the person\nso appointed must be from the rank of the Assistant Corps Marshal (ACM) and\nabove. Presently, there is no specification as to the rank of persons that can\nbe appointed to the foremost office in the FRSC, as is the case in some\nsecurity and paramilitary agencies. This amendment will serve to streamline\nappointment of Corps Marshal to certain cadres of the agency and to serving\nofficers within the agency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The bill seeks to introduce a new section 15 of\nthe Act, to extend the jurisdiction and operational zone of the FRSC to \u201call\npublic roads\u201d as opposed to \u201call public highways\u201d as stipulated in the extant\nlaw. This will mean that the operations of the Corps will cover all roads and\nnot restricted to highways. However, in reality, the Corps already operates on\nlocal roads as well as highways. It would appear that this amendment is aimed\nat providing legal backing to cover the sphere of the Corps\u2019 already existing\noperations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Furthermore, the bill amends section 17 of the Act, to state\nthat personnel of the FRSC on the rank of Deputy Corps Marshall shall be on the\nConsolidated Salary grade and enjoy its attendant benefits including retirement\nbenefits. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Section 19 of the Act is amended by\nestablishing a Road Safety Special Armed Squad, which will bear arms for the\npurpose of carrying out high risk operations under the purview of the functions\nof the FRSC. The extant provision of section 19 of the Act already entitles\npersonnel of the Road Safety Corps exposed to high risk operations, to the same\npowers, authorities and privileges as members of the Nigeria Police, including\nbearing arms. The amendment proposes to expand the definition of the powers,\nauthorities and privileges in this regard to include those given by law to the\nNigeria Correctional Service, Nigeria Immigration Service and Nigeria Customs\nService, as well as the Nigeria Police. It further seeks to establish a special\nsquad to bear arms, to operationalise this provision. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Generally, it appears that the bill seeks to\nmake some changes to the leadership structure and operations of the Corps, by\nkeeping the appointment of the Corps Marshal within the agency, enhancing the\nwelfare of persons on the rank of Deputy Corps Marshall. However, the amendment\nto operationalise bearing of arms by a unit of the Corps raises concern about\nincreasing militarisation of what should be normal civil enforcement activities\nof government agencies, especially with citizens\u2019 experiences regarding abuse\nof firearms by security agents. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A bill to amend the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) Act 2007 passed Second reading in the House of Representatives on Thursday, October 10, 2024. The bill is sponsored by Hon. Olaide Lateef Mohammed (APC; Oyo) and was referred to the Committee on FRSC for further legislative action. Among other issues, the bill seeks to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3651,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3646"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3652,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3646\/revisions\/3652"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}