60% of driving licence in C'River fake — FRSC

60% of driving licence in C’River fake – FRSC 20 Aug 2015 5:46 PM The Federal Road Safety Commission on Thursday said over 60 per cent of driving licence in Cross River State are fake. The state Sector Commander of FRSC, Mr. Ikechukwu Igwe, who said this while on a courtesy visit to the state chapter of the Nigeria Union of Journalists in Calabar, alleged that the licences were issued by touts. He noted that the licences were not captured in the database of the commission. Igwe said, “I have discovered that about 60 per cent of driving licences in this state are fake. They are produced by touts and are not captured in our database. “During last week’s enlightenment campaign with tanker drivers, we discovered that out of over 70 licences that were checked, more than 50 of them were fake.” The sector commander advised members of the public to use their handset to verify whether licences issued to them were genuine or not. “One could use his handset to know the status of his licence. What one needs to do is to open his message box, and then type ‘NDL’. Give a gap and then type ‘STATUS’, give a gap again and type the number of the driving license, then send it to 33811. “After some time, a message: ‘this licence was issued on …(date)’, would appear on the screen to prove that the licence is genuine. On the other hand, if this message appears: ‘not in the system’, it means the licence is fake,” Igwe explained. He advised motorists to be careful of someone, who requested for the copy of passport photographs for issuance of licence, adding that all potential driving licence owners must be captured by the FRSC machine at the designated Board of Internal Revenue office in Calabar.