Tragedy on the Benin-Sapele Road: Communal Failures and the Urgent Call for Change
My heart goes to the families of the passengers and drivers who lost their lives at Ologbo Axis today. When people celebrated Nigeria’s sixty-third independence, a petroleum tanker was flipping over and bursting into flames. Online videos recorded over fourteen vehicles burnt and scores of human beings sent to their early departure.
With excellent or alternative roads, that accident was avoidable. It is a calamity that shouldn’t have occurred. Those who died in that accident did because we failed them as a people. They died because we allowed the Benin-Sapele road to degenerate into a killer road. They died because the very government that swore an oath to protect them failed them.
This is not the first time that Axis has experienced the same calamity. How many more would have to die before the failed portion of the Benin-Sapele road gets fixed? May the Lord grant the dead a restful goodnight.
Followers of my posts would recount that I have shared videos and stories on the sufferings of commuters between Edo and Delta, especially at Ologbo, a couple of times.
Apart from the economic jeopardy, the perishing of goods occasioned by accidents or even perishable foodstuffs held without preservation and human resources losses due to perennial gridlock are commonplace. This type of accident has occurred before. The suffering of commuters along that Axis has been on for about four years now; I did warn that allowing the clogging of articulated vehicles in a particular spot over a long period was an accident waiting to happen.
Recently, a lorry loaded with pigs flipped over. You can trust that every marshy and muddy area is home to pigs. The pigs soon escaped to the nearby riverside. Pigs are not like cows that the shepherd can control. I’m not sure the owner could rescue all the pigs.
As we mourn and commiserate with the families of those who died in today’s accident, I hope this incident will steer a sense of empathy in the Federal Government to do the needful.
May the souls of the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in perfect peace. Amen.
Grace and peace!!!