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Family compensated 11-month after street sweeper died at Third Mainland Bridge

By Dennis Erezi
21 July 2020   |   12:28 pm
Eleven months after Folashade Ogunniyi was killed by a hit and run driver while sweeping dirt on Third Mainland Bridge in Lagos, her employer has compensated her family. Ogunnniyi died in August 2019. Until her death, the late sweeper, a mother of three, was employed by Highway Managers, an environment sanitation firm working contracted by…

Eleven months after Folashade Ogunniyi was killed by a hit and run driver while sweeping dirt on Third Mainland Bridge in Lagos, her employer has compensated her family.

Ogunnniyi died in August 2019. Until her death, the late sweeper, a mother of three, was employed by Highway Managers, an environment sanitation firm working contracted by the Lagos State Government.

Her body was recovered from the lagoon underneath the bridge on Friday, August 23, three days after she was killed.

She earned N15,000 as salary before her death. Without insurance policy in place, Highway Managers initially promised to pay N45,000 to the family to make up for her salary for three months.

However, since The Guardian reported the issue in September 2019, her husband Sotanmi Ogunniyi said the family have received financial and legal help from sympathisers who read the story and reached out to the family.

One of them is Osita Enwe, a lawyer with SRJ Legal Practitioners who offered legal services to the family and successfully reached an agreement for compensation between the company, Federal Ministry of Labour and Productivity and Sotanmi.

“After a lot of negotiations, we were able to reach an agreement that two million naira should be paid to the family to compensate for her (Folashade) death at point of duty,” Enwe told our correspondent on phone.

Enwe commended The Guardian for choosing to tell Folashade’s story even though the compensation could have been better than what was agreed.

“Good job from you (The Guardian) for bringing the light of the issue to the public. Many more like this happen and they just go like that.”

Folashade’s husband Sotanmi Ogunniyi, a private driver in Lagos, explained that he had received N500,000 from the N2 million based on their agreement. He said they agreed that the company will pay N100,000 to the family for 15 months to complete the payment.

He expressed gratitude to The Guardian for the compensation his family got for his wife’s death since last year.

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