Total Energies, NNPC Move to Raise Road Safety Awareness, Target 20,000 Young People
Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja
Total Energies in collaboration with the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC) yesterday announced the winners of ‘The VIA Creative Contest’, a programme meant to enlighten young people on road safety.
The programme seeks to encourage and train young people enrolled in schools, youth clubs and youth organisations to become ambassadors of safe mobility so they can be safer on their way to school and beyond, the organisers said.
Speaking during the event in Abuja, the Education and Inclusion Manager, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Division, Total Energies E&P, Tonye Osifo, explained that the programme carried out in concert with the project implementer, ‘Slum2School Africa’, was to reduce deaths from road accidents involving young people.
The presentations were made to Government Secondary School, Orozo in Abuja, which came first while Expressway High School, Tolu, Lagos and Government Secondary School, Gwarimpa in Abuja were second and third respectively.
“VIA creative contest also addresses these problems because if they (children) keep dying in road accidents, then we will not have the youth that will lead this country.
“So we’re concerned about the impact of road safety issues on the young children. And that is how this project came to be.
“For Nigeria, this is the second year we’ve participated in this competition. Each year we’ve done 100 schools and 100 schools have participated in this project. For last year and even this year, so we have taken schools from Port-Harcourt, Abuja and Lagos and then we talk to them about road safety,” she stated.
Osifo stated that the creative process which included drawings on safe mobility for young people, also gave the youths the opportunity to express themselves concerning their concerns while on the road.
Some of these concerns , she said, include absence of pedestrian bridges in strategic places, urging the government to address the suggestions made by the young people on ways to better their lot.
“ And we pray that with this, our government will also listen and try to address those suggestions and recommendations that the children have made to keep them safe so that they can grow up to fulfil their full potential and positively impact our nation,” she added.
The goal of the programme, the company added, is to contribute to education on road safety and citizenship with the best educational quality and the greatest possible impact through awareness on safe mobility to at least 20,000 young people within the age range of 10 to 18 years across selected schools.
Also, Total Energies stated that it aims to identify 100 schools, train 300 volunteer teachers, intervene in classes, lead awareness sessions by having students work in groups and coordinating their creative work as well as reward the best contributions in each school and then at the national level.
Also speaking, the Partnership Manager, Slum2School Africa, Hauwa Yahaya, said the best three presentations emerged from a pool of 100 schools.
She stated that what the programme intended to achieve was to make sure that school children leave their houses and return safely back home.
“In the process of going to school, there are numerous accidents on the roads. And this is a problem that we have identified as something that needs a lot of awareness and appropriate policy and all that.
“ We need to have the children at the back of our mind when building roads, making pedestrian walkways and taking it a step further than just zebra crossings, the primary users of these roads need to be enlightened on how to use them,” she stated.
