Sunday November 5, 2000 was a black Sunday Nigerians will not forget in a hurry especially people living in the South-Western part of the country. On that day, a fuel laden tanker caught fire on the popular Ife-Ibadan expressway killing over two hundred people while according to police record one hundred and fifteen vehicles were burnt. As usual there was the normal rage from Nigerians, collisions of condolence messages from political office holders and barrage of criticisms and accusations concerning the incident.
After a tragedy of that magnitude, one would think measures would be put in place to ensure deaths on that scale never happen again but no, we don’t learn from our mistakes. We rather go to sleep and wait for the next one to happen. We are not designed to be proactive, we only rise when tragedy has already struck. Eighteen years after the Ife-Ibadan inferno, we are mourning a new tragedy.
Yesterday June 28, 2018 there was a major fire incidence caused by a fuel laden tanker in Lagos on the popular Otedola Bridge killing nine while over fifty vehicles were burnt. Like the Ife-Ibadan expressway inferno, the Otedola bridge fire has been met with accusations, counter accusations and calls for prayers. The only difference this time around is that the Social Media is available to spread gory pictures and videos in real time. What happened yesterday should not have happened if those saddled with the responsibility of maintaining our highways and enforcing our regulations have done their tasks as expected.
There are existing laws that forbid truck and tanker drivers from plying major roads except for the hours of 11pm till 5am daily. The regulation which was put in place as a traffic control measure by the administration of former Governor Babatunde Fashola. Since he left, this law has been poorly implemented and we’ve paid for that with our blood and valuables yesterday. For a state that prides itself as a megacity, our emergency response to disasters woefully inadequate.
For a state with fifty seven local councils, the firefighting trucks in the state is mostly available at the state capital. With the large volumes of water surrounding the state, the common phrase still remains “we don’t have water”.
As usual, we will soon move away from the Lagos fire tragedy and continue with our lives but it’s a shame we allowed this to happen. This is a self-inflicted tragedy.
Read » Lagos Fire Tragedy: Shame of a megacity and a country that does not learn from past mistakes on YNaija
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