■ Kills all passengers, driver
More than 12 students of Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU), Ago -Iwoye, Ogun State were crushed to death yesterday when a container fell on the passenger bus conveying them.
Many others were seriously injured in the mishap, which occurred at the Shagamu section of the Lagos/Benin Expressway.
Our correspondent gathered that the unlatched 20-feet container fell off a moving truck as the driver tried to avoid an obstruction while driving against the direction of traffic.
The container with a Lagos registration number BDG 779 XE was said to have fallen on the roof of the Toyota Hiace bus also with a Lagos registration number XV 311 MUS a few metres away from the gate of a plastic manufacturing company near Ilisha Remo junction.
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 Ogun State Traffic Management and Compliance Agency (TRACE), Tommy Hamzat, told reporters that the driver of the container laden truck drove against the traffic.
Hamzat added that the fact that the truck was driving on the wrong side of the road made it difficult for the driver of the passenger bus to notice it, hence the two vehicles collided.
He said: “I was coming from the Sagamu end when I saw the accident and hurriedly parked my car. I ran there to see if the passengers but, unfortunately, all the occupants, were dead, including the driver,.
“The bus was facing Lagos, though I don’t know where it was coming from. The truck carrying the container was coming from the Sagamu end but was driving against the traffic and that resulted in the collision that claimed the lives of the innocent students.”
Also, the TRACE Commander in Sagamu, Kehinde Arode, who confirmed the death of 12 people, said that one other person was badly injured.
Arode said that the injured victim had been taken to Olabisi Onabanjo University Teaching Hospital in Sagamu, while the remains of the dead were deposited in the morgue of the hospital.
