The gory incident penultimate Saturday in which a container bearing articulated vehicle rammed into vehicles and commuters at Iyana-Isolo Bus Stop in Lagos has again raised questions about danger of this vehicles and a seeming helplessness of the citizenry. Gboyega Alaka explores the situation and possible ways out.
FOR the umpteenth time, Saturday September 10, 2022 turned out another bleak day for some commuters in Lagos, courtesy of the recklessness of articulated vehicles and their drivers. It was a day another wayward truck bearing a container, rammed into mini-busses, their passengers and commuters at Iyana-Isolo Bus Stop, instantly killing six-year-old boy and inflicting severe injuries on several others.
Speaking to The Nation on Wednesday, Funmi, who sells roasted plantain and corn at the bus stop, said it was a horrible sight. “The driver of the trailer, which clearly had failed break, was struggling to control it as it approached the bus stop area; unfortunately, the driver of a danfo bus got in its front and he rammed into it, causing its container to fall off. Immediately, a father, who was struggling with his two children, was thrown under the danfo, while the girl was also thrown off. The boy however got hit by the exhaust of the trailer, which immediately tore his stomach, revealing part of his intestines. The boy died immediately but the girl survived with serious bruises and an injury to the face. Their father had to be pulled from under the danfo bus. I think his leg was broken, as he could not walk. Several other people got injured; I think there was another man, whose scrotum was smashed. It was a horrible sight. We learnt the father later died at the hospital.”
Another witness, Feyi, who sells sachet liquor at the bus stop, said it was a black Saturday.
“That Saturday was a black Saturday. In truth, the container trailer was going on its own but a danfo suddenly got in its front, causing it to lose balance and cause the bloody accident. Four vehicles were condemned immediately. Apart from the boy who died instantly, the father also suffered broken leg and the daughter was badly bruised, a conductor’s two legs were broken, while one man’s private part was mangled. Really, I don’t know if doctors would be able to treat that man.”
She also spoke of the rumour that the injured father had died.
Both women, were however delighted when this reporter broke news that the father was alive and recovering at the hospital to them.
“Glory to God”, they both chorused.
Both women and another man, a cab driver, however gave kudos to the men of the Nigeria Police Force stationed at the Daleko Police post for their swift reaction.
“To tell you the truth, the police officers at the station here were very swift. They moved into action and helped in evacuating the casualties.”
That incident again raised questions about the road worthiness of these articulated vehicles and the perennial danger they have constituted, with many asking what has become of a ‘law’ by the Lagos State government, restricting their movement to 9pm to 6am. They wonder why such a law, which would have reduced the chances of casualties, was abandoned.
As if to confirm that the Iyana-Isolo incident was no one-off, another articulated vehicle reportedly fell over at Five Star bus stop along the same Apapa-Oshodi Expressway, just two days after; and three days after, on Thursday, another fell on the service lane just after Cele bus stop, causing gridlock and diversion. Thankfully, the Cele incident may have happened at night; it also happened a few meters from the usually crowded bus stop area, where human and commercial activities were usually in full swing.
Driver rammed into us deliberately – Victim
However, the father of the six-year-old now undergoing treatment at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) vehemently debunked the part of the witnesses’ narrative that a careless danfo driver caused the accident.
Speaking on his hospital bed, the victim (name withheld), who, as at the time of this discussion, was yet to learn of his daughters’ demise, said, “It’s not true that any danfo caused that accident. That trailer driver was simply a wicked soul who preferred to ram into human beings rather than ram into the median wall on his left. I saw everything. I saw the trailer; the driver had lost control from a distance and the vehicle was swaying while he was struggling to control it; but instead of him ramming into the median wall, he opted for a softer wedge, which was on his right, where we were waiting to board a bus, alongside other people and buses. I think he was trying to save his vehicle or its content from spilling.
“It all happened in seconds, so it’s not as if I had enough time to take any decision; but left to me alone, I probably would have jumped and escape unhurt. But I had my two children to struggle with and we were literally trapped. Before I knew it, I was under the bus, with my two children flung apart. I saw my boy try to get up but part of his intestines was out and blood was gushing out of his mouth. He was crying ‘daddy…;’ I think somebody carried him then. I tried to move but suddenly realised my leg was broken. I screamed for help but there was too much commotion. It was my injured daughter, who kept pointing at my direction that, ‘my daddy is there, my daddy is under the bus, before they pulled me out.”
We’ll prosecute driver/owners of truck- Police PRO Hundeyin
A member of the family of the injured father, who pleaded anonymity, testified that the police, led by one Superintendent of Police Garba from Area D Police Command in Mushin was at LUTH on the day of the accident to take inventory of the casualties. She also said he has visited a couple of times since then.
However, when this reporter visited the Area D office to follow up on the matter, mum was the word, as both SUPOL Garba and the Area Commander refused to oblige any information on the number of casualties or whether the driver of the trailer had been arrested, referring him to the Police Public Relations Officer at the Command Headquarters in Ikeja instead.
Fortunately, the reporter’s visit also coincided with the moment the police were loading the container onto the seized trailer, giving vent to suspicions that they were about to release the vehicle to the owners.
But reacting to this, the Lagos State Police Public Relations Officer, Benjamin Hundeyin explained over a phone interview that the owners of the goods in the container approached the police to let them take their goods, which the force granted them.
He assured that the vehicle was still in police custody and there was no plan or attempt to return it to the owner as at the time of speaking.
As part of ongoing investigation, Hundeyin said “the vehicle would be subjected to VIO inspection to ascertain what really went wrong. Was it a break failure or negligence on the part of the driver?”
He said, “The transport company is separate from the owners of the goods in the container; so when the owners of the goods approached the police to let them evacuate their goods, we had to let them. And the best way was to let them take the container to their warehouse and offload, as opposed to transferring the goods into another vehicle at the station. And I have confirmation that it has been brought back to the station. So we have issues with the vehicle, we have issues with the driver, but not the goods inside it because it belonged to another person. That is policing with a human face. He revealed that the driver of the truck was at large but said the owners of the container have been identified and they have shown up.”
He however said he did not have the identity of the haulage company, but chipped in that he would not divulge even if he had it, insisting that the charges were against the driver of the vehicle and not his employer.
Would that therefore mean that the company would be let off if the police are not able to find the driver?
“No, if we are not able to find the driver, the company will be held liable, because the company should be able to provide the person who stood as guarantor when they were giving the driver employment,” he replied.
He also said it will be a good thing if the families of the victims indicate interest to sue. In the absence of that, however, Hundeyin said the police would still go ahead and charge the driver or company to court.
“It’s just a matter of time. Once the VIO inspection is concluded and we still don’t see the driver, the case will go to court. We’ll tell the magistrate that we are holding the company in lieu of the driver. It will then be left to the magistrate to make a pronouncement.”
On the number of casualties, he said information available to him stated that “a trailer rammed into three other vehicles, killing one and inflicting fractures one and a minor injury on another.”
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‘We’re working with NPA to ensure trucks coming into Lagos are roadworthy’
Special Adviser to the Lagos State Governor on Transportation, Mr. Sola Giwa speaks with Gboyega Alaka on the various efforts of the government to regulate and curb the excesses of articulated vehicles.
THE menace of articulated vehicles have continued unabated in Lagos, isn’t there anything the state government can do about it?
We must appreciate the fact that Lagos State is home to seaports that handle about 90 percent of imports and exports in the country; so we would expect to see these trucks on Lagos roads. We cannot stop their activities because if we do, we’ll be stopping the activities of the ports, and in essence, we’d be shutting down the economy of Nigeria. Of course there are other ports in Nigeria but what is the state of security?
However, for these vehicles to move, we have something that we have been operating for about a year, where we are collaborating with the Nigeria Ports Authority on how the trucks move in and out of the ports. That is part of what we did with the Apapa Special Committee that I head now. I was head of operations until this appointment as Special Adviser on Transportation. Now, we’re moving to the next level, which is the safety aspect. The NPA has what it calls the MSS (Minimum Safety Standard), of which you go through a process to get its sticker, as a prerequisite to working in the ports. So the Lagos State government is partnering with the NPA through our VIS (Vehicle Inspection Service); so going forward, for any truck that comes into Lagos to work, the VIS will have to certify them OK. In fact today, I was at the NPA headquarters in furtherance of this plan. We are working with the terminal operators through the NPA to get this done.
Lagosians have been wondering what happened to the law restricting articulated vehicles’ movement to 9pm to 6 pm, as it now seems like they move at anytime. Was it abrogated?
It was a regulation, not a law. You would agree with me that even the current call-up system we are operating is a way of regulating them. At that time, the regulation was a necessity, and nobody has reversed it. However, we also noticed the issue of security which came up, where drivers and owners came here complaining that they are being attacked while moving at night. So as a listening government, we started looking for other ways of regulating them, such as use of weigh bridges and stopping them from point of entry into the state. However, that may require serious logistics and even cause backlog of traffic. So we have decided that let them come to the ports and then they get checked there. As a government, we have to continuously think outside the box and evolve.
Who were those mandated to implement?
Basically, every law that is enacted – whether by federal, state or local government, is supposed to be implemented majorly by the police. And of course we have the LASTMA, the VIS and the FRSC. So where we are going now is not to prevent them from moving but to regulate them, rather than have them taking over the road. Our new technique is that every truck coming to Lagos or the port will have to go to a particular park – there are about 35 of such parks; generate a code, buy your ticket online and with that they are able to get into the port. That way, they don’t just move around constituting danger anymore. So they move from a designated park to either Apapa port, Tin can port or anywhere they are going. The ports also have an access barrier and it is the code that you generate that you will use to enter the park. If you have a job to do at say APMT, it is APMT that will confirm before that barrier would open for you to go out of your park. If you don’t enter that first park, the port barrier would not open for you. So the first access barrier and the second access barrier are in sync. And that is how we came about the success we have recorded. And like I said, the next level is the safety of the vehicles. Another challenge we have is that most of these vehicles are not registered in Lagos, which makes it hard for us to keep a tab on them. Let me also state that we will continue to arrest and punish the errant ones among them. We also recently issued a removal order to trucks parked under bridges in Lagos in seven days.
These days, it seems these trucks are driven mainly by teenagers and men just out of their teens, which may have accounted for these unsavoury incidences; isn’t there a way Lagos can regulate this?
Some things are not within the purview of the state, and issuance of driver’s license is one of them. Such issues have to be dealt with holistically as a nation. We have also noticed this trend; and what we have discovered is that most of those young drivers are motor boys, whose drivers released the trucks to, while they take a rest in Ogere or somewhere outside the state.
Victims can sue – lawyer
Human rights lawyer and convener of Access to Justice, Joseph Otteh speaks on legal options available to victims.
WHAT are the legal actions victims of accidents from articulated vehicles can explore?
Anything that causes people harm or injury and is as a result of intentional or negligent act or omission is actually ground or cause for action. In this case it is of trucks that are not in good condition. Unfortunately, you can sue only if you are alive. But the families of the victims can sue; and those alive with injuries can sue for themselves and demand the people who caused the accident to be made accountable for it.
The police say they would be arraigning the owners of the vehicle if they cannot find the driver, who at the moment is at large. But they are not likely to be suing for damages on the part of the victims.
They actually indicate both civil and criminal wrong doing. You could say criminal negligence or failure to observe road safety precautions. The police can actually prosecute the driver of the vehicle and if they have proof that the owners of the truck were also complicit in that negligence, they can also sue them. Yes you are right, they may not pursue civil action for the victims but the victims themselves can sue and get remedies for this violation.
The problem with our people is more of ignorance; what are the processes for instituting such cases?
Everybody has the right to approach the court- whether with the assistance of an attorney or by themselves. But of course it’s going to be extremely difficult for people who don’t have an attorney to navigate through the very complex system of our court and the complex use of law that is involved in all of this. This is in addition to the fact that they will also be made to pay very high fees for filing this kind of claim. Some of the filing in court is actually calibrated according to the size of your claim. So yes, you have to pass through some rigours, both in the terms of hiring legal counsel as well as coughing out considerable sums of money to get the process started.
Another issue is the very slow pace at which the court processes take. To some extent, the time will depend on the calibre of lawyer you hire but on the average, it has to do with the court that you find yourself assigned to. While some judges do their work conscientiously, unfortunately, you cannot say same of others. There is also the possibility of the judge being transferred in the course of the process, which takes you back. Having said all these, our courts do have the capacity to hear out such cases and determine the claim. And hopefully, the victims of these atrocities would find some form of justice.
We are going to deal with only female models and there is a reason for that. We want to stay away from common trend. Anywhere there are housemates; there will be male and female. We want to reduce controversy, remove emotion and be strictly professional. Even if in due season males join, they would stay in separate homes. We are not going to mix them because we are bringing them in for Professional reasons. We want to stay away from those activities that would bring negative connotations about things. Imagine if you have an 18 year old going to a house with a grown up man. There are parents who wish their children to get certain professionalism but because of the way people put it out there, they want to keep their daughters away. So, we want to work in a way that parents would have confidence that if my daughter is going there, she is safe. We also have undertakings that all the participants make sure that their parents are aware; know where they are going and living conditions.
