By Rose Moses
On August 2, 2020, I watched a very touching video trending on social media. Later I watched the same video on Channels Television. As I did, the visuals made me shed tears of grief.
Maybe you too watched that video. In case you did not, one Mrs. Chineze Ajoku was sorrowfully narrating, with pain, the tragedy that befell her family.
A container, as it were, apparently loosely latched to a trailer, fell right on a bus in which her daughter, Miss Chidinma Ajoku, an employee of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) was commuting back home from work that ill-fated day.
The incident happened at Ilasamaja bus stop in Lagos and a week after the freak accident claimed the lives of some bus passengers, Mrs. Ajoku is seeking justice.
Mrs. Ajoku, a widow and mother of 27-year-old Chidinma who died with a work colleague, Chima, in the tragic incident, wants the Lagos State government and other relevant agencies to bar unlatched container-laden trucks and trailers from the roads.
In an emotion-laden voice, while calling for justice on the death of her daughter and the others from the incident, Mrs. Ajoku took up the authorities on what she described as the recklessness of trailer/tanker/truck drivers on Lagos roads and elsewhere in Nigeria.
“My daughter, who works with FAAN at the time, with her colleague, Chima, was returning from work in a commuter bus and I think the bus either stopped to pick or drop passengers when a container loaded on a speeding trailer fell on the bus, crushing the passengers to death.”
And phew, that was how the life of a 27-year-old graduate of Babcock University with plans to further her studies abroad in the near future, abruptly came to an end!
If the mother and siblings of the deceased are inconsolable, that is very understandable. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Ajoku said if her daughter had been ill and died from the illness, it may have been more bearable for the family.
The worst part is that most of the times when such incidents occur, the drivers and their conductors disappear into thin air with police acting helpless and the bereaved left to stew in the juice of sorrow.
Mrs. Ajoku, for instance, said that after the incident that claimed the life of her daughter, she had sent a cousin of hers to the police station where the response they got was like adding salt to injury.
The police, she claimed in the video, told her cousin they could not trace the owner of the truck since the driver ran away, along with the conductor and particulars of the vehicle. Really! But they did not run away with the fully-loaded container nor the trailer, I dare add.
The best the police did was to inform that the owner had called to say he would come around and that when he does, they (police) would arrest him….” And that was it? Where else does this kind of thing happen? Only in Nigeria, you may rightly say.
Although I cannot say if eventually the owner of the vehicle as well as the driver were located but it is absolutely ridiculous for an investigative body like the police that had all the clues (truck and container) to even come up with such a statement in a case like the one at hand.
READ ALSO: https://www.thexpressng.com/2020/08/06/our-men-didnt-attack-gov-zulum-boko-haram-did-army/
Unfortunately in Nigeria, victims are simply left to their fate, most times, as there is hardly any government to enforce any laws.
The menace of these truck drivers on Lagos roads, especially, is roundly so excruciating to most residents. Incidents involving containers falling on other vehicles have indeed become a recurring tragedy.
Last year, I once visited an upscale fashion designer in Lagos, who somewhere along the line, broke down, sobbing profusely after some people had come in to discuss some matters concerning her mother. She did not just stop at telling me of the demise of her mother that I had met a couple of times at the place, but went on to narrate how painfully she died.
It was one Saturday morning, she said, as the late mother was coming back from a night vigil when one of such unlatched containers fell off the trailer and landed on her mother’s car, thus crushing the old woman to death.
In May last year, a container fell off the Ojuelegba bridge causing a traffic gridlock around the area. It is the same story across many parts of the state. These trailers are known to carry loads too heavy for the body of the vehicle, such that when climbing bridges they tend to roll back and in most cases, the containers would fall off, often resulting in very tragic incidents.
At the same Ojuelegba in June 2018, for instance, a container reportedly fell off the bridge crushing some cars. The truck, laden with goods in a 40-feet container, was trying to avoid potholes in the area when it tumbled and fell, thus causing severe traffic jam, in addition. Neighborhood residents said the accident was caused by over-speeding.
Although no one was injured, there was panic among residents as the truck brought down power cables, thereby disrupting power supply in the area.
At Iyana-Iba, near the Lagos State University, Ojo, a fully-loaded 40-feet container sometime in 2018, reportedly fell on top of an 18-seater commuter bus. Luckily again, no life was lost but the ugly incident expectedly worsened the daily gridlock on that road where many portions were in a terrible state of disrepair, having suffered many years of neglect by successive governments.
In the middle of the lockdown necessitated by the Covid-19 pandemic, an unregistered Dangote Cement truck reportedly crushed six people in a taxi at Epe long bridge on Epe Expressway, Lagos, on April 1 this year.
The taxi and the truck were operating, despite a lockdown imposed on Lagos by the federal government to prevent the spread of COVID-19 at the time.
Such an avoidable and needless waste of life and property keep staring Lagos residents in the face, mostly due to lawlessness and the poor state of the roads. Where these containers are not crushing cars and human beings, they are causing severe pains on the roads for other users.
My heart, for instance, usually skips a bit each time I see myself driving by the side or behind any of these container-loaded trailers on Lagos roads. And I believe the same applies to the majority of road users, whether in private or public vehicles.
The menace of these container-carrying vehicles and trucks has been so alarming that various attempts have been made by both state and federal governments to address it but with little result recorded. This is why today a heartbroken Mrs. Ajoku and many other Nigerians are calling on the authorities concerned to regulate the road use of these articulated vehicles to avoid such needles deaths.
The seaports are mostly located in Lagos. Therefore, trucks will surely be around to evacuate goods–something that would have been easier if our railway system is functional. But the reckless set of drivers, who often do not understand the basic rules of using the roads, coupled with very ugly policies that see them spending days queuing up to gain access into the ports and thus blocking major roads leading to the ports, have turned them into monsters and grave risk to other road users and residents.
In an effort to curb such the container menace in the state, Lagos State Government, at some point, actually passed a law restricting trailers and articulated vehicles from moving between 6 a.m. and 9 p.m.
The restriction was to ensure strict enforcement of the Road Traffic Law, which was often violated by the trailer drivers, with the government promising to go tough on any trailer that contravenes the law.
This was in addition to a presidential directive for these trailers and trucks to be taken off Lagos roads and bridges.
Recall that sometime last year, President Muhammadu Buhari issued a directive for the immediate clearing up of the Apapa gridlock and restoration of law and order to Apapa and its environs within two weeks.
Incidentally, the only time any such thing seemed to have taken place was when the President was visiting Lagos State, for as soon as he left, the recklessness returned with unprecedented severity, as the vehicles from wherever they disappeared to, returned with as much impunity, thus posing even more dangers.
And so, from all indications, it would appear that the law to rid Lagos of the articulated vehicle menace only remains on paper. There is hardly any sign to show that these truck drivers are adhering to any such rules.
Now, something desperate has to be done by government to put an end to the needless deaths and torture posed by these vehicles and their drivers.
As Mrs. Ajoku pointed, even if that is what the death of her daughter could achieve, she would find some peace, if that is realised.
