Otonye Efebo · CEO/Executive Chairman AA Rescue, has disclosed that his company has been involved in getting the youths who are jobless out of the streets by training them to become useful to themselves and the society which they come from.
AA Rescue is a privately owned company established in 2003 with a focus on changing the driving culture of Nigerians through towing of vehicles professionally, capacity training, defensive driving and curriculum development for drivers and potential drivers.
The chairman, who made this disclosure in an interview with journalists said since inception of the company, AA Rescue has trained many drivers and given them employment in both private, corporate and government institutions as a way of contributing to the reduction of unemployment in Nigeria.
Mr. Enyebu explained that AA Rescue, as a certified Drivers’ Academy, came as a child of circumstances owing to the huge lacuna in the driving culture of most Nigerians which he said needed an emergency rescue to reduce road crashes on the highways.
“ When we started, the driving culture wasn’t too good, and is still not good. So, we looked at changing the driving culture of the country. So, we have been doing that for a while. We have some sets of products that are societal ; to improve the living in the society. So, we have the society product – the driving school; defensive driving, rescue people in distress etc. All those are society products that really don’t give you mark, but they are still necessary for society and we also have a commercial, logistics and it’s commercial, we try to use logistics to cover the Society of products because basically that’s what we do: we try to balance both”.
According to the chairman, private and government institutions have over the years benefited from the company through its out sourcing of cyclists, truck and regular drivers to these institutions to help instil sanity on the driving profession and guarantee more safety on the roads.
“Well, one of the major out sources are drivers because like we said , we are really bent on changing the driving culture the country. We have worked with the regulatory bodies of our time and there are some improvements. We out source drivers, most of them are our staff, and we get them and train them before out sourcing them to the Government and we go e them to individuals as well, and so that’s why we would need to train them and constantly train other drivers through the capacity training, defensive driving and curriculum, so our drivers are constantly trained on defensive driving, road culture to ensuring that they become basic drivers, so some companies depend on us to train the drivers and some depend on us to get their drivers.
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“But generally, people count on us to get their drivers always asking so the demand is high, and to ensure that we meet up with supply, we have our own drivers academy, we get people from the streets, people who had not known how to drive, we get them, train them for a while and make sure that they understand the road network and will be able to drive very well. And then, we also have truck drivers so that we create jobs opportunities for all of these people because with the Advent of Uber, and now that we have motorcycles as logistics, they are also trained as motorcycle drivers, truck drivers, so our drivers academy trains cyclists, truck and regular drivers to create job opportunities for the society.
“The MDG’s also help us in order for us to be able to train a lot of people. So, our organization is about creating opportunities, picking these guys off the streets to teach them how to drive”.
The chairman of the company however regretted over the rising road accidents that have claimed many lives and destroyed properties, saying that 95 per cent of road accidents are usually caused by human errors which could be avoided in most instances.
“95% of accidents are as a result of human error, though the roads are not too good. But, if you are very careful, then the accident rate will decrease. We are widespread in our training to ensure that we have less accidents on roads, but population is forever growing, and for a company to change it’s culture, it’s not really that easy. So, we’ve worked with regulatory bodies, like FRSC ,LASMA in Lagos and other organizations, but the beautiful thing here is that the young people we train; most of the young ones would be more careful and if you come in here, in seven months, you will see a lot of people who are in driving schools and we are very proud to say that we have progressed overtime and we look at the accident rates and we see that those that trained with us are into less or no accidents.
“So, if we can expand our scope overtime, the accident rate will drop. Also, we have gone to motor parks to run a campaign for defensive driving, capacity building for truck drivers in almost all the states we have. Well, with time, it will reduce, especially when FRSC involves in advocacy instead of just regulation. So, please, my take here; with our brothers is that the regulatory agencies should please come together to train more people so as to avoid accidents on our roads”.
Mr. Enyebu therefore, expressed optimism that with the growing business opportunities that abound in Lekki, the company is more prepared than ever to increase its capacity and training to take more youths off the streets and give them meaningful life.
According to the chairman, “for us, we look at population density and the area. If we are moving to a particular area where we think population density is enough to cover our services rendered and the capital income is also high enough, then we move in. We have about 7 offices in Lagos, and we are thinking of opening two more in the metropolis. For us it’s basically the population density and income”.
You can know more about AA Rescue through their official Website.
