Worried by the rate of accidents involving tankers on Nigerian roads, the Petroleum Tanker Drivers (PTD) branch of the National Union of Petroleum and NaturalGas (NUPENG) has trained 4000 tanker drivers on safety measures.
The training, which took place across the zones that the union is divided, had in attendance men of the paramilitary whose services are connected to safety on the highways.
Men of the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), Traffic Compliance and Enforcement Corps (TRACE), Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), Fire service and Medical doctors trained the tanker drivers.
Speaking at the Ibadan edition of the training, the national chairman of PTD, Chief Salimon Oladiti, said the training commenced when he became the national chairman of the union following the rate of accidents among tanker drivers.
He, however, said the awareness training programme that started about three years ago had started yielding results as there had been a huge reduction in tanker accident in the country.
He also said his leadership stopped night journey by tanker drivers when it was discovered that 70 per cent of tanker accidents occurred in the night.
He said, “We want our petroleum tanker drivers to make Nigerian roads safety, especially at this ember months and beyond.
This message to petroleum tanker drivers is not peculiar to Lagos zone alone, as we do it here we do in core north, middle belt and other areas, we have also asked them to be peer educators for their colleagues that are not here.
When I became the national chairman of the union hardly in a week that we won’t record accidents involving tanker drivers like five or six. But we thank God that the awareness campaign that we started is yielding positive results.
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“When we came we also set up a committee to look into the causes of the accident and we discovered that 70 per cent of the accidents occurred in the night and we decided to ban night journey by tanker drivers and this has also reduced the accidents on the road”.
Oladiti, however, tasked the drivers to put to use the knowledge and information acquired at the training to further reduce carnage on the road.
He said, “Only the living can attain greatness if one is dead, there is nothing more, a dead person cannot aspire to be anything again, we should, therefore, ensure strict adherence to the knowledge gained during the training for our won benefit and that of other road users”.
Also speaking, the vice-chairman of the union, Olajide Kilanko, said the training was organised for independent marketers’ driver to ensure safety.
He said, “About three years ago we used to have accidents and tankers crashes and we discovered that the international companies like Total, Mobil and so on usually train their drivers and we, therefore, decided to organise this training for independent marketers.
“We have trained no fewer than 2000 drivers in Lagos zone, we will move to Warri and also the north, in all, we plan to train between 3500 to 4000”.
