Scores of students of the Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU) in Nigeria were crushed to death and others gravely injured on Friday when a container fell on a passenger bus conveying them.
The unlatched 20-feet container from a moving truck came off when the driver was driving against traffic and in a bid to avoid an obstruction at the Sagamu stretch of the Lagos/Benin expressway, the load tipped and dropped lethally atop of the bus’ roof.
The weighty container press – pinned the bus to the ground in the accident.
It was learnt that the OOU students were travelling to Lagos state for the weekend when they met their untimely death.
The Ijebu – Ode Commander of the Ogun state Traffic Management and Compliance Agency (TRACE), Tommy Hamzat told reporters that the driver of the container laden drove against the traffic.
Hamzat added that the wrong driving made it difficult for the passenger bus driver to notice the approaching truck and eventually collided with it.
He explained that the container from the truck fell on the bus which caused the death of the passengers.
He said: “I was coming from Sagamu and saw the accident, I have to hurriedly parked my car, ran there to see if the passengers could be rescued but unfortunately all the occupants were dead including the driver.
“The bus is facing Lagos, though; I don’t know where it was coming from. The container truck with no load in it was coming from Sagamu side but was driving against the traffic and that resulted in the collision, which eventually claimed the lives of the innocent people.”
Also, the TRACE Commander in Sagamu, Kehinde Arode, who confirmed death of 12 people, said one person was badly injured.
Arode however, said that the injured person has been taken to the Olabisi Onabanjo University Teaching Hospital in Sagamu, while the remains of the dead have also been deposited at the same hospital.
