Posted by By Niyi Odebode on
THE Ogun State government on Saturday said victims of Friday night's auto crash on Lagos-Sagamu Expressway would be given a state burial.
THE Ogun State government on Saturday said victims of Friday night's auto crash on Lagos-Sagamu Expressway would be given a state burial.
The state Deputy Governor, Alhaja Salimot Badru, who visited the hospital at 4 pm on Saturday, disclosed the plan.
She said that the dead would be given mass burial.
Badru, who said the state government would pay the hospital bill of the injured, stated that the date for the mass burial would soon be decided.
The relatives of the victims besieged the Olabisi Onabanjo Teaching Hospital, Sagamu, where they believed that some of the bodies had been deposited in the morgue.
No fewer than five of the passengers, who survived the tragedy, were admitted at the hospital.
A doctor at the emergency ward of the OOUTH, who pleaded anonmity, said the five passengers sustained high degree of burn, adding that they had been transferred to the Intensive Care Unit of the hospital.
Relatives and sympathisers, who thronged the hospital, were barred from seeing the injured passengers. A man, who identifed himself as Adewale, told Sunday Punch that his brother, was among those who died.
He said one of the buses involved in the accident was going to Iperu from Lagos, adding that many of the people in the bus were traders, who went to Lagos to sell gaari.
Burnt corpses of 16 of those who died in the accident were brought to the mortuary of the OOUTH at 6 pm on Saturday in a truck with registartion number LG 29 SGM owned by Sagamu Local Government.
Relatives of the dead, who had besiged the mortuary since Saturday morning, wailed as hospital staff conveyed the dead, who included two children, to the morgue.
The Police Public Relations Officer in the state, Mr. Femi Awoyale, in a telephone interview with Sunday Punch, said the police could only confirm the death of 47 people.
A woman, who identified herself as Sadia, told Sunday Punch that her sister must have been involved in the accident.
She said, "She phoned me when she was leaving Lagos for Sagamu on Friday and I have not seen her. I have been to the mortuary and no corpse was shown to me."
No fewer than 60 people were burnt to death in an accident that occurred on the road on Friday night.
An eyewitness told our correspondent that the accident occurred when the fuel tanker, which was on a top speed ran into a pothole.
In a bid by the driver to control the vehicle, the tanker collided with a commercial bus and caught fire.
The fire spread to three other vehicles, two buses and a Mitsubishi car, which were heading for Ibadan.
The eyewitness said the tanker driver‘s attempts to control the vehicle failed because of over-speeding; the road was wet and slippery.
At the scene of the accident on Saturday, officers of the state accident rescuing agency were seen combing the surrounding for the remains of the dead, who were burnt beyond recognition.
Commuters spent many hours on the road on Saturday because of the hold-up that occurred after the accident.
In an interview with our correspondent, the Police Public Relations Officer in the state, Mr. Olufemi Awoyale, said police would continue directing traffic on the road until the situation improved.