The Lagos State staff bus-train collision has claimed the lives of six persons including a nursing mother and scores of victims are still being attended to by medical doctors at Lagos State University Hospital (LASUTH), Ikeja.
Emerald News reported earlier that the staff bus marked Lagos: 04A-48LA, collided with a train operated by the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) along Agege Motor Road in Shogunle, Lagos.
As maintained by The Guardian, the immediate cause of the incident was the reported reckless driving on the part of the bus driver while trying to beat the train traffic signal at a railway crossing, before the moving train rammed into the bus.
A security guard in the area, Promise Fineman told The Guardian: “I heard the sounds a few minutes past 7:00a.m. I ran out and I saw three people already on the floor. I saw people making videos instead of rescuing. So ,I jumped inside the bus through the window and saw five people dead already on the bus.”
On emergency rescuers, he said: “Emergency workers were not here on time and that was a big problem, but people with cars started carrying those injured to the hospital before an ambulance arrived at the scene.”
Speaking on the incident, Railway District Manager, Lagos District, Augustin Arisa, said: At 7:20a.m. we got the distress call from our driver that there was an accident at Shogunle’s level crossing. While other drivers were waiting for the train to cross, the bus driver veered off from where other vehicles waited and entered the track. Before the train could stop, it had already carried the vehicle to a distance of about 100 metres where it was forced to stop.
The Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Idowu Owohunwa, who was in the company of the Assistant Inspector-General of Police in charge of Zone 2 Command, Abiodun Alabi, said the policemen on ground were able to control the crowd to ensure smooth operation and removal of the vehicle: “We have a protocol for dealing with an incident like this and it was activated and we made sure that the crowd control and the emotional component was properly managed to give room for the emergency response team.”
