Federal Road Safety Corps,FRSC, has urged the public to ignore reports going round that the corps had started distributing and mandating its personnel to carry arms.

FRSC Head of Media Relations and Strategy, Bisi Kazeem, said the rumour was being circulated by mischievous elements seeking to provoke disorder in the society, saying some irresponsible people took a recent statement by the Corps Marshal, Boboye Oyeyemi, out of context to suit their agenda.

Kazeem said the Corps Marshal was only lamenting the recent findings that seventy marshals lost their lives this year alone to some reckless motorists and was misquoted, saying the Corps Marshal only stipulated that such a high number of loses could have been avoided if FRSC personnel were carrying arms as allowed by the law.

But, he quickly added that there was no immediate plan to implement the law that permits the officials to carry arms, saying it was unfortunate that some wicked people now took that to mean that he said officials were now being armed; it was a figment of their imagination.

Kazeem said the FRSC boss was misquoted based on the rumour making round on the social media, saying people even circulated a picture that depicted some road safety officials being drilled by the Nigerian Army on how to handle firearms.

He said the picture was dug out from trainings that took place years ago to make it seem as if it was part of a purportedly new arrangement to arm the officials, saying the corps had been undergoing such training on regular intervals since 1992 during the administration of former President Ibrahim Babangida.

The spokesperson said an amendment to the FRSC Act in 2007 granted the road traffic managers the power to bear arms like the police and other security agencies, saying previous corps marshals of the FRSC did not prioritise its implementation.