The Federal Road Safety Corps said on Thursday that age falsification had created the need for birth certificates to be part of requirements for the issuance of the new national driving licence.
The Lagos State Sector Commander of the FRSC, Mr Chidi Nkwonta, told the News Agency of Nigeria in Lagos that the development was part of the corps’ effort at ensuring that licences were issued only to qualified applicants.
“The requirement of birth certificate as part of the criteria for the issuance of driver’s licence has always been there, it is not a new requirement.
“We are now enforcing it because we discovered that applicants are abusing the column for the birth information, they just sit down and write any date.
“You will see a 70-year-old woman writing 40 years as her age, which is an obvious lie. This can defeat the essence of the project,” Nkwonta said.
The commander said that age was pertinent to the new driver’s licence project, so as to prevent underage and old people from driving.
“Of course, there are issues relating to age qualification for driving: you must be up to a certain age before you can drive, it is 18 years.
“Now, it is not sufficient for you to tell us verbally that you are 18 years old, we need to see the birth certificate to authenticate the age you are claiming.
“Also, there is a terminal age for driving– which is 70. But we see aged people of 75 or 80 coming for drivers’ licence; we need the birth certificate for entering into driving and to terminate the exercise,” he said.
On age falsification, Nkwonta said: “We take for granted that the applicant is swearing to an oath and if it is falsified, it is a chargeable offence of perjury.’’
NAN reports that the command has made it compulsory for each applicant of the new national drivers’ licence to present his birth certificate before processing. NAN
