Home

Before You Kill Peace Mass Transit, Please Hear From Them

Many topics have surfaced on the social media that caught my attention namely: “Unprecedented rate of unemployment”, “Death-traps on the highway (Poor road networks)”, “MMM” , “Peace Mass Transit again!” – the last one caught my attention. As a student writer, I took it upon myself to investigate and publish an unbiased report about PMT. Some points in the report may shock you!

Peace Mass Transit Ltd. was registered in Nigeria in 1996. They have 3000 buses moving about 30,000 persons with about 2000 buses daily and with staff strength of over 4000. PMT moves about 5.4 million people in 6 months and has been in this business for 20 years. They stopped increasing the number of their buses since 2012 to improve on the quality of their services and equipment. In 2009, Peace Mass Transit Ltd introduced the Speed Limiter into the Nigerian transport sector which was commissioned at their Emene Enugu Central Workshop by the then Core Marshal of the Federal Road Safety, Chief Osita Chidoka. Their buses since then have been using the speed limiter, as they are concerned in the safety of passengers.

In April 2016, they invited the present Core Marshal, Boboye Oyeyemi to come to Enugu and commission their 300 units of the latest model of Toyota Hiace Bus with Speed Limiters, this was just to support the Federal Road Safety in her campaign that all motorists should use the Speed Limiter, as they they are being embattled then by the National Assembly. FRSC has been retraining their drivers for long so they only wanted to be a friend in need.

The Core Marshal, out of joy, because of what he saw when he was addressing the drivers, promised to give an award to Peace Mass Transit if they should operate for one month without accident and also authorized them to start their own driving college, and that FRSC will give them full technical support. He said that he never knew that a facility like that exists in Nigeria. They knew it is not easy to run 3000 commercial buses for one month without crash on Nigerian roads, but, their drivers promised to deliver and hell was let loose against them.

Within the one month, a truck at Abia rammed into one of their bus on the right lane and killed 12 of their passengers and driver on the spot. Another truck along Yenagoa Road chased their bus into the bush and killed their driver and 8 of their passengers. They lost about 23 passengers between May and June; the worst in their 20 years history. They also lost their Core Marshal award. They were saddened to put up defense when blames and condemnation started pouring on them through the social media, radio and in the print media because they needed to respect their drivers and passengers who lost their lives, but then their quietness was taken by the public as acceptance of all accusations that was labeled on them. Their enemies also capitalized on this and re-posted previous accidents on social media as breaking news.

The police report exonerated them from the cause of the 2 accidents . So too was the FRSC report for the Umuahia accident, while the FRSC report for the Yenagoa accident is yet to be released.

On the 7th of July, they launched a campaign on defensive driving techniques in collaboration with the FRSC, Industrial Training Fund and the VIO at Enugu. On the 13th of July, their management team led by the Executive Director Operations and Maintenance went to Abuja for a meeting with the FRSC, to discuss this current development. In the invitation letter, they were told that they recorded 10 crashes in 6 months with 23 deaths. As if 23 were not bad enough, at Abuja, they were told that they recorded 11 accidents with 37 deaths in 6 months . They couldn’t contest this as it is very dangerous to confront your regulator in a third world country; moreover, he who lives in a glass house does not throw stones.