Nigeria Faces 65,000 Road Deaths by 2030 If... — Ex-Aviation Minister

Nigeria risks losing at least 65,000 people to road crashes by 2030 unless urgent investments are made to improve road safety, former Minister of Aviation and ex-Corps Marshal of the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), Osita Chidoka, has warned.

Speaking on The Morning Brief on Channels TV on Monday, Chidoka said the country’s road-traffic fatalities could escalate if current trends persist. 

"If we do nothing and these crashes keep growing at the current 10 per cent between 2024 and 2025, and FRSC remains without patrol vehicles and fueling to go about at least reducing speed on our highways, by 2030, we would have lost at least 65,000 Nigerians from road crashes. It could be me, it could be you, and it could be anybody, and that is not good enough," he said.

Chidoka criticised the lack of decisive action on road safety despite recurring mass-casualty incidents. 

"No country loses 5,000 people from a particular incident and does nothing," he added, stressing the urgent need for intervention.

The former minister insisted that Nigeria has the capacity to reduce fatalities and serious injuries significantly. 

He cited "vision zero," a strategy aimed at eliminating road deaths entirely, as an achievable goal. 

"Road safety is not the same as FRSC. FRSC is the Federal Road Safety Corps, but road safety is an issue that Nigerians should be interested in," he said.

Chidoka called for immediate measures rather than new legislation. "We don’t need any new legislation, we don’t need any new laws," he stated, urging the Ministry of Works to use part of its existing budget to improve high-risk road corridors.

Nigeria’s road safety crisis is longstanding. The FRSC reports roughly 5,000 deaths and more than 31,000 injuries on the nation’s roads annually. 

In 2024 alone, 5,421 people died in 9,570 crashes, and over 10,000 fatalities were recorded between 2023 and 2024. 

Unsafe driving practices, overloading, and inadequate infrastructure, particularly along high-risk routes, continue to exacerbate the problem.

Without swift intervention, Chidoka warned, the country faces a sharp rise in preventable deaths in the coming years.

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