By Godwin Obi
The Chairman and Chief Executive of Bonny Way Motors Ltd, Chief Boniface Nwachukwu, has appealed to the Federal Government to fix Nigerian Roads to reduce armed robbery and kidnapping of motorists and their passengers on the roads, even as he also urged the government to ban movement of buses plying the inter-states routes especially those on the Northern states in the country.
Chief Nwachukwu who made the call while speaking in an interview with our editor in his Oyinbo office, also maintained that regular maintenance of roads across the country will also drastically reduce accidents on the highways.
Mr. Boniface Nwachukwu, the Managing Director, Bonny Way Motors, stated these recently in Lagos in an interview with journalists at the launching of the seventh generation of Paradiso 1350 bus model in conjunction with Mercedes-Benz.
Nwachukwu described buses on inter-states routes as killers, which had consumed lots of useful lives, stressing that it was the high time the Federal Government banned them on such routes.
“If I am the President of Nigeria, I will ban small buses on the road. The bigger buses are comfortable for the passengers. The small ones are killing. If you go to Young Shall Grow Motors, you will see thousands of them. But, look at my buses, no one has crashed till today.
“People like me, I can’t enter small buses. They are killing. If passengers want to survive they should enter the bigger bus, if you enter the small bus you’re in danger”, he said.
Nwachukwu also appealed to the government to fix the highways across the country, in order to make them motorable.
He lamented that the current state of the road, contributed immensely to the damage of vehicles in the country, regretting that in spite of the agitation for improved road networks in the country, the situation had remained sordid.
“That’s why we are appealing to the Federal Government to help us fix the road so that the vehicles will last longer. All my vehicles cover northern routes, mostly like Jos, Yola, Bauchi, Gombe, Aba-Owerri and Kano.
“If government would assist us and fix the road, I can buy more vehicles and put them on the road. I have more than 50 buses now right now, all Marcopolo.
“There is no improvement on our roads. The condition of road is not good for the vehicles. And because of the deplorable condition of the roads, the driver will slow down in order to maneuver and this is when armed robbers would come and disturb them. Some of the buses are up to 15 years and they are still operating. The secret is maintenance.”
He described Mercedes-Marcopolo as the best luxury buses in the world, stressing that the first sets of buses he acquired in 2004 were here in.
He, however, noted that the buses were expensive, but insisted they were good value for money.
He declared that Bonny Motor Ways adequately train its drivers to ensure total safety on the highways, noting that it would not compromise safety on the highways.
“I have trained drivers in my company. The drivers who would drive these buses are already trained. I can’t buy a vehicle worth N200m and give it to just anybody to drive.
“For the past 20 years that my company has been in operation, we have not experienced any serious accident. My passengers love my vehicles because there is no breakdown and no accident on the road.”
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