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Road accident claims 14 lives in Ebonyi

By Nnamdi Akpa, Abakaliki
10 August 2015   |   12:03 am
A GHASTLY road accident involving an articulated vehicle and a 14-seater bus left no fewer than 14 persons dead over the weekend. The accident was said to have occurred at about midnight at Amasiri Secondary School junction on the Afikpo-Okigwe expressway. Confirming the incident, the Afikpo Unit Commander of the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC),…

nigerian roadA GHASTLY road accident involving an articulated vehicle and a 14-seater bus left no fewer than 14 persons dead over the weekend.

The accident was said to have occurred at about midnight at Amasiri Secondary School junction on the Afikpo-Okigwe expressway.

Confirming the incident, the Afikpo Unit Commander of the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC), Roland Ogbuke, said that one of the vehicles was conveying members of the Assemblies of God’s Church, Isu, in Ohaoazara local council from a burial programme.

According to him, the unit received a distress call early morning about the accident, “so I mobilised my rescue officers immediately to the scene of the carnage.” He cited sources as saying that the articulated vehicle was trying to dodge a heap of sand on the road but hit the oncoming bus, which was in a convoy.

“The articulated vehicle then pushed the bus to a tree some metres away from the road and crushed it on the tree, decapitating the bus in the process and mangling the passengers’ bodies.

“We had to mobilise a nearby quarry company, which used its heavy duty machine to cut the tree and parts of the bus, to evacuate the bodies. The crushed passengers were mostly women, while their relatives and church members in other vehicles helped the officers with the evacuation.”

He added: “The police, in particular, assisted the FRSC in evacuating the bodies to the Mater Misericordae Hospital in Afikpo because our vehicle developed a serious fault on the way.

“We hereby urge citizens of the state whose relatives failed to return from a journey on Saturday, to visit the hospital to identify corpses of the relatives.

“We urge the public to imbibe road safety practices by shunning night journey and over-speeding, among other practices that

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