Femi Ogbonnikan in Abeokuta
Not less than 12 persons were sent to their early graves in Ogun state in a ghastly motor accident which occurred Saturday. Eight other passengers sustained various degrees of injuries.
The incident occurred Saturday at about 12:25 pm at Fidiwo village, an Ogun community sharing common border with Oyo State.
It was gathered that the road accident involved two vehicles, a Lagos yellow-colour intra-city Ford transit bus with registration number AAA 886 AR, on high speed which was coming from Lagos and heading to Ilorin, Kwara State wanted to overtake a Volvo truck marked LSD 138 XQ at the stretch of the road where traffic was being diverted in order to repair weakened bridges at Fidiwo/Ogunmakin, along Lagos/Ibadan expressway.
It was learnt that the officials of the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) patrol team who initially noticed that the driver of the ill-fated commercial Ford bus was on high speed had earlier waved him down to a halt but he ignored the patrol team and instead hurled abusive words at them. Barely five minutes after he ignored warning, it was said, the driver veered off the road and colluded with the Volvo truck travelling in the opposite direction, thus claiming the lives of 12 out of the 20 passengers onboard the commercial vehicle, while eight others sustained varying degrees of injuries.
The Ogun State FRSC Route Commander in-charge of Public Education, Mrs. Florence Okpe, who confirmed the road accident, said preliminary investigation showed that the mishap was caused by over-speeding and wrongful overtaking, which led to the loss of control at the narrow end section of the road where traffic was being diverted to enable repairs of the weakened bridge between Fidiwo and Sandcrete.
According to her, the corpses of the dead passengers had been taken to the morgue of FOS Mortuary Ipara, in Remo North Local Government Area of Ogun State, while those injured had been taken to Ifeoluwa Hospital and Immaculate Hospital, both in Ogunmakin.
