For many applicants who either want to obtain fresh driving licences or renew the expired ones, it has been one long wait too many in recent times, reports SAMUEL AWOYINFA
AN estate agent, Mr. Oladele Bolanle, was flagged down in the morning of December 7, 2010 on his way to the office by the men of the Lagos State Vehicle Inspection Unit, popularly called VIOs.
They asked him to produce his driving licence. Nursing no fear, he gladly released it to them for inspection. But after careful observation, the verdict from the officer was: “Your driving licence is a fake.”
Befuddled by the verdict, he was instantly booked. However, since December when Bolanle submitted application for a fresh driving licence, he is yet to obtain it. What he uses in lieu of the document are the copies of the receipt of payment and the applicant’s form.
From investigations done by our correspondent last week, there are many commercial drivers and private car owners in Bolanle’s shoes. Thousands of motorists, both those who had applied for fresh driving licence and those for seeking renewal, are currently in a quandary and do not know when their driving licences will be ready.
The processes of obtaining either the fresh or renewed driving licence start with the Motor Vehicle Administration Agency, then to the VIO and finally to the Federal Road Safety Corps. Both the MVAA and VIO are under the Ministry of Transportation, Lagos State, while the FRSC is a federal agency.
Applicants make payments in relevant offices and then obtain forms for both fresh and renewal, both of which are issued by the MVAA. The official amount payable for fresh driving licence is N3,190; and for renewal, N3,040. This information is displayed conspicuously in front of the agency’s office at Ojodu. However, unconfirmed reports say applicants pay as much N3,500 and N3,300 respectively.
After payments are made, the vehicle inspection officers take applicants through tests, which include practical driving within an area in their Ojodu premises. Eye tests are also carried out to ensure that applicants are fit to drive. They are also made to watch a VCD on television, which dwells mostly on road instructions and the rules guiding intersections and roundabouts, and road signs generally.
It is after this that applicants move to the FRSC for what is known as ‘capturing.’ Here, the information on the forms brought by applicants is fed into the FRSC database, and it forms a part of the information that appears on the individual’s driving licence.
Again, applicant’s photograph and fingerprints will be directly captured in this office.As such, the FRSC office is the final destination in the tripartite relationship of driving licence production. The FRSC produces the driving licences and hands them over to the MVAA, or the state concerned, as the case may be. It is from the state organ that the applicants pick up their driving licence when they are ready.
In recent times, however, there seems to be a break in the chain of driving licence production. Investigations by our correspondent seem to indicate that the FRSC is overwhelmed by the deluge of demand for driving licence in Lagos especially, while it also seems as if the machines for its production are inadequate.
While the MVAA keeps issuing between 200 and 300 application forms for driving licences on a daily basis, the number of backlog of those who want the document keeps increasing. That means more work for the FRSC.
Since the FRSC seems unable to match the demand, especially in terms of prompt production, backlog, as our correspondent discovered, date as far as July 2010. And that is for the Ojodu, Lagos, licensing office alone. In other five licensing centres like the Old Secretariat, Ikeja, Sura, Ikorodu and Iyana Oworo, the backlogs could date as far back as May or June 2010.
A number of applicants who came to the Ojodu office of the MVAA last Thursday, hoping to collect their licences, were disappointed. An official of the MVAA merely told them to go to the FRSC office, which is within the same premises.
Mr. Cyril Ezegbune, who had applied for a fresh driving licence since last August, was angry when he turned up on Thursday, hoping to get his licence. “It is annoying. This is the sixth month since I have applied for a driving licence; up till now, I’ve been repeatedly told that it is not yet ready. What is really the problem? They should let us know what is going on,” he stresses.
Ezegbune says since he has no national identity card or international passport, the driving licence serves as his only official means of identification, saying he needs it to update his bank account.
Another applicant, Mrs. Abajigin Omobolanle, said she had applied for the driving licence since April 2010. She also turned up on Thursday, but she was unlucky. After the MVAA official had rummaged through the stack of driving licences on her table, Omobolanle’s own was not there.
Omobolanle explodes in anger, “It is not easy to carry one’s international passport to the bank every time, what with the security implications.”
She states further that she has had to come for the re-stamping of the receipt of payment and applicant’s form on two occasions to revalidate them and to avoid embarrassment from law enforcement agents when on the road.
On his own part, another applicant who identified himself as Mr. J. Adeosun tells our correspondent that he applied for the driving licence in March 2010, and that he was lucky to have his own among the ones that are ready in the MVAA office.
Before he got lucky, he says, he came for revalidation of his documents about three times, coming every three months.
On Wednesday, the sector commander, FRSC, Lagos State Command, Mr. Jonas Agwu, while reacting to the issue of delay in the production of the driving licence, states that there are many factors responsible for it.
He lists inadequate number of licensing centres in Lagos, the backlog that had built up during the period the production of the licences was stopped as a result of the face-off between the Lagos State Government and the federal government, among others.
“The number of application forms we are getting outweighs the number of licensing centres in the state, which is why it becomes imperative for the state to expand the number of centres it currently has, which is just six,” he says.
Agwu, who notes that the recent joint operations by the FRSC, VIO and LASTMA in fishing out motorists with fake driving licences have led to the upsurge in the number of applicants, adds that the FRSC has agreed with the state government that there is the need to establish more centres in the state so as to fast-track driving licence production.
The Lagos State commissioner for Transportation, Prof. Bamidele Badejo, stresses that there is the need for all the agencies involved in the production of driving licence to work together in order to meet the desired objective.
“Who is the federal, state and the local government? Is it not we the people? I believe all the chains involved in the production must work together towards achieving the common goal – which is the production of driving licence. It becomes another thing when one part to the whole process is failing on its own responsibility,” he adds.
Badejo explains that there is a joint committee working on the driving licence and he believes that the committee will find a lasting solution to the hiccups being experienced currently.
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