In Kogi State, on Sunday, a car accident along the Okene-Lokoja highway claimed the lives of nineteen people due to burns.
The Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) said in a statement that the accident involved a Dangote truck with registration details NSH680YJ and a Toyota Hiace bus with registration number KMC455ZE. Jonas Agwu, the agency’s public education officer, made the statement.
The FRSC reports that the truck’s route violation caused both cars to collide head-on, igniting a fire.
The agency said out of the all-male 22 passengers involved in the accident, three were rescued.
“The TYT bus loaded from Kano was in its lane on the highway when the Dangote Truck driver, who drove all the way from Port Harcourt, wrongfully overtook a vehicle & collided head-on with the bus. The impact of the collision resulted in an inferno that burned the victims to death,” the statement reads.
“Unfortunately, 19 people out of the 22 victims were killed and 1 injured. The remaining 2 victims, who got rescued by FRSC operatives without injuries, survived the crash because they complied with traffic regulations on the compulsory use of seatbelts.
“The corpses of the dead victims whose lives were claimed by the crash have been deposited at Okene General Hospital.”
Dauda Biu, the FRSC corps marshal, said the agency will continue its ongoing prosecution of drivers “who, by their actions, cause road traffic crashes in Nigeria.”.
Biu further called on the judiciary, the leadership of transport unions and other relevant stakeholders in the road transportation sector to join hands with the corps to ensure speedy and effective prosecution of offenders.
