-Transport Buses Burst Into Flames on Collision
AT LEAST 29 people died and another 16 were injured in a horrific traffic accident in Yobe State, north eastern Nigeria on Friday.
According to police authorities and road safety officials, the accident occurred when two buses traveling at high speed in opposite direction collided with each other and burst into flames, killing passengers who almost all were burned beyond recognition.
The buses were identified as Toyota Hiace vehicles which can take up to 18 passengers each, although it is not unusual for transport drivers to overload their buses.
Spokesman of the Nigerian Police, Mr. Frank Mba, spoke to journalists about the incident which occurred close to Nengere, saying 11 persons killed in the accident were unidentifiable due to the severity of the burns suffered.
“Two Toyota Hiace buses traveling in opposite directions had a head-on collision and thereafter went off in flames,” Mba said, adding that “Twenty nine persons — eleven of them burnt beyond recognition — have so far been confirmed dead.”
Nigerian drivers often show blatant disregard for road regulations, even on some of the perilous roads around the country, endangering theirs and their passengers’ lives in the process. Overloading is also an issue, which the drivers do out of a desperate desire to secure maximum profit from their transport businesses.
Efforts to reign in the high rate of road accidents in Nigeria have not yielded enough results, as corruption and poor infrastructure continues to undermine even the best effort of the authorities.
The Lagos State government enacted stringent road traffic laws last month to combat what it described as an unruly regime of road usage in the state. A few prominent people, including lawyers, have criticized the measure as excessive.
Commercial motorcycle riders, popularly known as Okada, have also protested against the new traffic laws that strongly limit their movement on Lagos roads. Observers are watching closely if the new laws in Lagos will reduce accidents on Lagos roads.
A 2010 report by the Federal Roads Safety Commission revealed that about 17,000 people died in at least 31,000 road accidents in Nigeria between 2007 and 2009. Other reports have recommended a vast investment in Nigeria’s poor transport infrastructure as a first step towards reducing road accidents in the country.