afrol News, 26 August - A new West African road safety organisation that is to coordinate efforts in Nigeria, Togo and Benin is underway. The new regional body is to become an offshoot of the International Road Safety Organisation after West African countries during the last year have withdrawn form the Lisbon-based body due to "inability to fulfil their financial obligations."

The president of the Group of International Road Safety Organisation (GPA-PRI) West Africa, who is also the Corps Marshal of Nigeria Road Safety Corps, retired Major General Haldu Hananiya, has received a report of an ad-hoc committee set up by the organisation to unravel the circumstances surrounding the dwindling participation of the West African sub-region in the International Organisation of Road Safety.

The Committee, set up in April 2004, in its report, posited that six out of the nine countries from the sub-region that were hitherto members, have withdrawn from the intercontinental body basically because of their inability to fulfil their financial obligations, thereby leaving only Nigeria, Benin and Togo as the current members.

The committee, in its report in the face of this development, expressed the need to establish a new West African Road Safety Organisation that would serve the best interest of the entire ECOWAS sub-region, considering that many road safety problems are peculiar to the sub-region.

General Haldu said that the report submitted by the ad-hoc committee had been accepted as a working document with a view to implementing the content. The ad-hoc committee had also been expanded and transformed into an implementation committee to work out the modalities for the creation of the purely West African Road Safety Organisation within two months.

General Haldu further said that the choice of a befitting name for the new body would be determined by the house in due course.

By staff writer

© afrol News

Related pages and feature

Current afrol News Top Stories