The Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) says its attention has been drawn to an old video currently being recirculated on social media showing an erring tricycle rider on a face-off with FRSC patrol team, after being caught destroying patrol vehicle along Sapele road Benin, Edo State.
Corps public education officer Assistant Corps Marshal Bisi Kazeem in a statement on Monday said that the video was recorded on Thursday, July 16, 2020, and the staff involved have been adequately disciplined in accordance with FRSC regulations on maintenance of discipline at the instance of the Corps Marshal, Boboye Oyeyemi, and the outcome of the trial made public on August 2, 2020.
According to Kazeem, as an organisation that does not condone indiscipline, the FRSC had to punish the said staff for being uncivil towards the tricycle rider so as to deter other staff and compel them to be tolerant, more professional and gentlemanly while handling traffic violators.
However, a Magistrate Court sitting in Benin on January 11 2021, sentenced the tricycle operator Adeshina Adeyemo to three months imprisonment for attacking the patrol operatives and damaging of patrol vehicle belonging to the FRSC.
Kazeem said that Mr Adeyemo was arraigned with a case file number MEV/117C/2020 before Magistrate F. Ojehumen of the Evbuoriaria Magistrate Court B on a two-count charge bordering on conducting himself in a manner likely to cause breach of public peace and for maliciously damaging FRSC patrol vehicle.
He recalled that on the first count charge, the accused was to pay the sum of N5,000 or one-month imprisonment and N41,000 or two months imprisonment for the second charge and both sentences are to run concurrently. The defendant who failed to meet the option of fine was taken into custody at the Nigeria Correctional Service in Benin City.
Reacting to the old trending video, “the Corps Marshal, FRSC, Dr Boboye Oyeyemi wishes to admonish the perpetrators of such media propaganda to desist from heating up the polity at this sensitive moment of the national development, and fashion out measures that could enhance peaceful coexistence, rather than ignite anger and violence,” the statement added.
