A railway collided with a bus carrying employees of the Lagos State government on Thursday at the PWD Bus Stop in the city of Ikeja, leaving eight people confirmed dead and several others injured.
The train coming into Lagos from Abeokuta trapped the state government staff vehicle on its rail as it attempted to cross the PWD/Sogunle rail crossing.
Eight adult female state employees perished and several others were injured, according to a statement released on Thursday by Mr. Ibrahim Farinloye, the South-West Director of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA).
For adequate medical attention, those who suffered injuries have been transported to the Lagos State Government Hospital.
The Nigeria Railway Corporation team, the police, the Federal Road Safety Corps, Civil Defense, and the state emergency management agency were all on the site to deal with the problem.
In a statement, Dr. Olufemi Oke-Osanyintolu, the director general of the Lagos Emergency Management Agency (LASEMA), said that when the agency’s response team arrived at the scene of the incident, it was discovered that a Viale BRT bus and a train had collided at the aforementioned address.
Updates on the train and bus incident that left numerous people thought dead has been provided by the Lagos State government.
In the meantime, the early-morning Thursday tragedy involving a railway and a bus carrying Lagos State government employees has caused Babajide Sanwo-Olu, the governor of Lagos State, to express profound shock and grief.
On Thursday, Sanwo-Olu shared his thoughts on the incident with journalists while paying a timely visit to the victims at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH), Ikeja. He called the occasion “a very sober one for us as a government and people in Lagos State.
“According to Sanwo-Olu, who spoke about the incident, “This morning at around 7:30, a bus numbered 33, was one of the fleets of the staff buses, as we have a total of approximately 60 of them in Lagos State conveying our personnel from different parts of the state to Alausa.
In essence, for the next three days, Sanwo-Olu has ordered that all flags in Lagos State be flown at half-staff.
To join their families in mourning, I will also suspend my campaigns for the next three days. Consequently, there won’t be any public engagements or campaigns during this time. He claimed that the bus driver turned himself into the Lagos State Command of the Nigerian Police and is currently serving under the Police Command, making it impossible for him to be questioned further about what transpired.
The governor claims that the driver made a very poor decision because it was evident that the train was approaching and he believed he could simply drive over or whatever.
Thus, his judgment must have been flawed. We don’t know what caused the accident until we speak with the driver who is being held by the police.
We had 85 persons in the bus from the instant charge that was conducted on who got varying degrees of injuries,” the governor said about the accident’s fatality toll. Unfortunately, we have reported six fatalities even though 42 people had moderate injuries, 29 had serious injuries, and 8 had mild injuries.
Just two were brought in dead, and LASEMA, the first responders, talked about them. Nonetheless, four further deaths were reported in the ICU here in LASUTH, while some occurred during surgery. So there you have it—a complete breakdown of all 85 passengers.
Furthermore, it has been ordered that the Nigerian Safety Investigation Bureau (NSIB) launch a quick inquiry into the underlying reasons for the railway and Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) disaster that happened on Thursday morning in the Ikeja neighborhood of Lagos State.
According to Dr. James Odaudu, Sen. Hadi Sirika’s special assistant for public affairs, the minister of aviation gave the NSIB specialists the go-ahead to conduct an adequate inquiry into the incident. Odaudu claimed that while Sirika termed the tragedy regrettable, she reassured the public that the NSIB will be able to identify its immediate and underlying causes and suggest solutions for averting similar incidents in the future.
investigators have been alerted, and we’re mobilizing them to the accident location. He clarified that when gathering evidence at the accident scene, the investigators will obtain the necessary evidence to carry out the analysis.
Conclusion
The minister expressed sympathy for the terrible incident’s victims and prayed for the souls of the deceased and a speedy recovery for the injured. We are horrified by the news of the collision between a train operated by the Nigeria Railway Corporation and a bus carrying employees of the Lagos State to their workplaces early on Thursday morning in Shogunle, Lagos.
Source: Punch
