NO fewer than 40 people were feared burnt to death on Sunday and scores of others severely injured in a multiple auto accident that occurred at the Lagos end of the Lagos-Ibadan expressway.
Over 30 vehicles were involved in the accident that occurred around Otedola Estate and it completely crippled movement of vehicles on the expressway. Fifteen of the vehicles got completely burnt.
An articulated vehicle, otherwise known as trailer, loaded with sugar, while descending the bridge that links the old Lagos Toll Gate to Berger Bus Stop, reportedly had a failure and rammed into a stream of vehicles on the busy road.
Some of the eyewitnesses, who spoke with the Nigerian Tribune, however, blamed the accident on the roadblock mounted on the expressway by men of the Nigeria Police.
The blood of the victims flowed on the expressway and sympathisers rained curses and abuse on men of the Nigeria Police.
A five-year-old boy and his mother were among those who lost their lives in the accident, while those who jumped down from the bridge were all injured.
The Nigerian Tribune gathered that the unmarked truck was heading towards Ibadan, when it ran into the barricade in the middle of the road and attempts by the driver to halt the vehicle were futile, forcing him to ram into the vehicles in front of him.
One of the buses hit by the truck reportedly went up in flames before the affected vehicles in turn caught fire.
Seventeen passengers of an 18-seater bus and another 13 passengers from another 18-seater bus were carrying the people who got burnt in the road carnage.
The accident scene almost became riotous, as some people threw various objects at every police van that attempted to stop at the scene of the accident.
Fadipe Rasak, the assistant director in charge of the Lagos State Fire and Safety Services, while speaking with the Nigerian Tribune, stated that his office got a call around 11:30 on Sunday morning about the accident.
He also added that it took his men some time to put out the fire as efforts were initially made to see if some of the trapped victims of the involved vehicles could be rescued.
He stated that some of the rescued victims of the accident were taken to different hospitals for treatment.
A survivor, Nike Abidogun, told the Nigerian Tribune that she had joined a bus from Ketu to Mowe and that her vehicle had got hooked in traffic “caused by a police checkpoint,” when the trailer crashed into a long queue of vehicles.
Another survivor, Isaac Ejivwevwo, who lost his Toyota RAV 4 in the accident, corroborated Abidogun’s view when he declared: “I was close to the policemen, when the trailer lost control and began to hit all the vehicles before one of them caught fire.”
Bolaji Bello, who claimed to have taken one of the survivors of the accident to an unnamed hospital in the area, stated that he had gone to refuel his vehicle when he saw a young girl jumping from the top of the bridge.
He stated that the young girl was unconscious at the time she was taken to the hospital, with every likelihood that she might have broken some bones in her body.
There were conflicting reports on the identities of the policemen that reportedly caused the accident.
While some of the eyewitnesses claimed that they were men of the Rapid Response Squad, others stated that they were from Isheri Police Station.
Efforts to speak with the spokesman of the Lagos State police command were futile as calls to his mobile phone lines were not answered.
Also, on Sunday, two persons died in a road accident at Obadan, on the Benin-Auchi road.
The accident, in which a male and female died, involved two commercial buses with registration numbers XP 548 JJJ and XA 522 EHR.
The autocrash reportedly occurred when one of the buses, in the process of dangerously overtaking another vehicle, collided with another bus coming from the opposite direction.
The bodies of the dead victims of the accident were said to have been deposited at Our Clinic Hospital mortuary in Benin City.
The Edo State Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) boss, Mr. Henry Olatunji, who confirmed the development on Sunday, described the crash as unfortunate, saying the accident could have been avoided if the drivers had followed defensive driving techniques.
He cautioned road users against reckless driving, just as he said the command had embarked on special patrols tagged ‘Operation Eagle Eye’, to curb the excesses of road users.