On The New Driver’s Licence - .the Guardian Newspapers

Sunday, 29 September 2013 00:00 Editor Opinion - Editorial

TRUE to all predictions, the enhanced Driver’s Licence and Vehicle Number scheme was turning out an exploitative and insensitive venture capable of visiting increased misery on Nigerians. Many issuing centres in the cities, against the initial September 30 deadline set for the expiration of old number plates and driver’s licence, had witnessed huge human traffic, subjecting Nigerians to needless panic and excruciating agony over the purchase of the so-called new driver’s licence and number plates. But thankfully the Joint Tax Board graciously extended the revalidation exercise to June 30, 2014, in a public announcement it carried recently.
  However, by its earlier refusal to review the scheme, and by its inability to anticipate the panic and traffic, the government seemed to have re-affirmed its insensitivity to the plight of Nigerians. In this regard, officers implicated in the initial shoddy execution of the scheme should be made to face sanction.  
  Since the FRSC re-commenced the issuance of the new driver’s licence and new number plate a few months ago, following the halt put to it by the National Assembly, Nigerians have been subjected to harrowing and humiliating experiences in order to beat the deadline for the expiration of the old driver/vehicular identification. Apart from the huge human traffic, the process is cumbersome and time-consuming, as reports from Lagos, Ibadan, Abuja and other city centres have shown. In many instances, it demands frequent unwarranted ambling from the FRSC’s office to the bank and then to the Vehicle Inspection office for the final lap of the process. Even after the completion of the paper work, one is confronted with shortage of capturing machines and even total system failure — a situation responsible for frequent postponement of applicants’ digital image-capturing. The effect of this is that applicants for new number plates would be made to deal with their vehicles without identification for weeks and even months.
  Sadly, this is not what the FRSC, the Joint Tax Board and other stakeholders had bargained for when the FRSC designed the ‘One drive, One Record’ harmonised licence scheme, which FRSC Corps-Marshal Osita Chidoka, stated, “can be shared with other security agencies for crime prevention and the promotion of national security”. If that is the case, then what happened? How did vehicle number plates become scarce as the deadline approached?
  Despite the fact Nigerians have often been criticised as intolerable, their compliance with the FRSC’s directive through an uncanny display of patience and subservience, amidst sloppy management of a municipal facility, is commendable. However, it would be a mistake to take this for granted as the government is wont to do.
  As the rush in the centres has demonstrated, it is doubtful if the government considered the ripple effect of its negligence and inconsiderate administration of the driver/vehicular identification process. With scores of dissatisfied customers milling around the centres, manned by discourteous and ill-mannered officials, who themselves have become challenged by the tedium and tackiness of the exercise, it would take only a short while before tensions begin to mount, especially with the non-availability of driver’s licences and number plates. As tensions rise and tempers flare, simple altercations, which ordinarily would be resolved, frankly, would become, in this mob setting, a recipe for violence. And Nigeria, charged as it is from the palpitation of socio-political discontents, cannot afford to be fanned aflame by a commotion over driver’s licence and number plates.
  It is probable, therefore, that a groundswell of public complaints and an acknowledgement of its incapacitation might have impelled the FRSC and other stakeholders in the scheme to reconsider an extension of the September 30 deadline.
  Although various excuses, such as the characteristic Nigerian rush syndrome, have been adduced for some of the major challenges encountered in the scheme, it is an indication of managerial insight to anticipate panic and rush in innovations such as this.
  As it is, there is a latent bureaucratic malady, which reinforces the suspicion that the government does not possess the administrative capacity to manage a project as lofty and ambitious as this biometric database. In its typical rehash of errors whenever a new public-oriented programme comes up, new numbers plates have suddenly become scarce and image-capturing machines have stopped working or have not yet been supplied, just when Nigerians need them most. Is it not a cause for worry that a government desirous of this unified mode of driver/vehicle licensing to treat this highly regarded scheme with levity? A government that cannot set a deadline or one that dilly-dallies with crucial projects of national importance gives room for all manner of hirelings, including its agents and fraudsters, to thrive.
  Given the lack of preparedness on the part of the authorities concerned, and the tardiness surrounding the whole exercise, Nigerians deserve a respite.  However grand the idea of an enhanced Driver’s Licence and Vehicle Number scheme seems, the execution of the project is confused and badly implemented. Its long-term nationalistic intentions and developmental motive seem to be blighted by this shoddy execution.
  It is either the government is ready for the enhanced Driver’s Licence and Vehicle Number scheme, or it is not. If it is, all things must be in place to make this exercise as hitch-free as possible, as the Public Amendment of the JTB has stated.