A fatal accident on the Okene-Lokoja highway has claimed 19 persons.
The crash involving two vehicles and a truck occurred on Sunday along Okene-Lokoja highway, the spokesperson of the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), Assistant Corps Marshal Jonas Agwu, has said.
Agwu said in a statement that a crash investigation report revealed that the accident involved two vehicles comprising a Dangote Truck with registration number NSH680YJ and a Toyota Hiace Bus with registration number KMC455ZE.
He said: “The Toyota Hiace bus loaded from Kano was on its lane on the highway when the Dangote Truck driver who drove from Port Harcourt wrongfully overtook a vehicle and collided head-on with the bus.
“The impact of the collision resulted in a fire inferno that burnt the victims to death. According to the report, the crash which was caused by route violation ‘One Way’ and wrongful overtaking, involved 22 people, all male.
“Unfortunately, 19 people out of the 22 victims were killed and 1 injured. The remaining 2 victims who were rescued by FRSC operatives without injuries survived the crash because they complied with traffic regulations on the compulsory use of seatbelts.
“The FRSC emergency rescue teams deployed to rescue the victims could not achieve desired results as the efforts they put into the rescue operations were unduly hindered by the fire inferno that engulfed the two vehicles.”
Agwu said the corpses of the dead victims were deposited at Okene General Hospital.
