Three ladies
aged between 25 and 30 years died Thursday afternoon after the hummer
bus in which they were travelling was knocked off the Lagos-Benin
highway by an operational vehicle driven by operatives of the Nigerian
Customs Service.
The commuter bus
with registeration number EDO AKA 35 LG carrying second hand clothes
also known as okirika, somersaulted during a hot chase by Customs
officials from the Federal Operations Unit, Zone A, Ikeja from one of
their checkpoints in Ijebu Ode. The driver of the bus allegedly refused
to stop when flagged down at their checkpoint which resulted in the
tragic chase.
According to the driver who was in severe pains, having lost one of his legs in the accident, when the
Customs
pick up van could not overtake him, it hit his bus at the rear which
caused the vehicle to somersault several times into the bush at a place
indigenes called J3.
On sensing that
the bus had crashed into the bush, the Customs officials beat a hasty
retreat to avoid being attacked by members of the public that
immediately rushed to the scene of the accident.
Three women in
the bus died on the spot and the other injured victims were brought out
of the bus and were writhing in pains. There was no policeman or road
safety official on hand to assist them.
Until
the time PMNews correspondent, who was on his way to Port Harcourt,
left the accident scene, the corpses of the three women and the victims
were still lying there. Some of the sympathisers at the scene lamented
that sometime ago, road safety officials had equally chased some
passengers to their death in the
same area. They called on appropriate
authorities to check the excesses of law enforcement officials on the
road.
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