A minibus crushed a Lagos State Waste Management Authority employee (LAWMA) to death in an accident in Lagos State’s Ketu region on Monday night.
Olufemi Oke-Osanyintolu, the Permanent Secretary of the Lagos State Emergency Management Agency, confirmed this in a statement on Tuesday.
According to the permanent secretary, the accident occurred when the driver of the minibus drove recklessly and collided with a truck belonging to the agency that was parked haphazardly on a portion of the road.
According to reports, the minibus collided with the officer who died before emergency responders arrived.
He said, “Upon the arrival of LASEMA’s Tiger Response Team at the incident scene by 00:07 hrs, it was discovered that a registered commercial (yellow) minibus popularly known as (korope) registration number AGL 97 YK collided with a parked LAWMA truck, registration number unknown.
“Preliminary investigations at the scene indicated that the accident occurred due to reckless driving on the part of the minibus and carelessness on the part of the parked LAWMA truck, which did not indicate its ‘parked’ status with a ‘C-Caution” sign at the required position and appropriate distance from the truck, thereby leading to a collision with the LAWMA compactor truck.
“Further investigations revealed that in the process of the accident, the minibus hit a LAWMA official performing his lawful duties. Unfortunately, the LAWMA official died before the arrival of the agency’s response teams.”
The perm sec stated that the minibus driver suffered injuries and was treated by emergency responders, while the body of the deceased LAWMA officer was turned over to state health officials for further action.
“However, the driver of the accident minibus sustained significant injuries and was given immediate medical attention by paramedics from the agency’s Pre-Hospital Care Unit at the incident scene.
“A search and rescue operation was conducted to remove the injured driver of the minibus.
The dead LAWMA official was recovered and bagged by the agency’s Response Team.
“The remains of the deceased LAWMA official were handed over to officials of the State Environmental Health Monitoring Unit for further processing,” Oke-Osanyintolu stated.
At the time of filing this report, the agency’s Director of Public Affairs, Sade Kadiri, had yet to comment on the incident.
