Yesterday, more than 50 vehicles burned in Lagos oil tanker explosion when a petrol tanker with failed brakes crashed and exploded on Otedola Bridge.
I am sad. I am angry. I am mad. The images, the videos from the incident made me shed a tear. The tragedy of this is that, this was an avoidable accident and it will probably happen again. What is Human Life Worth in Nigeria? By next day, the burnt vehicles will be removed, the bridge re-opened and we will carry on with our lives, like nothing happened.
No tests will be carried out to test for the structural effects the explosion may have had on the bridge. I can bet that no policies, no form of enforcement, no regulatory bodies will be put in place to ensure that such avoidable incident doesn’t occur again. I mean, these are peoples lives we are talking about, not chickens or goats.
In a sane Country, the owner of the tanker would be prosecuted and made to pay heavy fines which should serve as a deterrent for other owners. This will ensure that the owners of such trucks make sure that their trucks are roadworthy and their drivers are rigorously trained to drive such vehicles. But will that happen in Naija?
Our Leaders say we should PRAY for Nigeria. People who narrowly escaped the accident will go to church on Sunday and have a thanksgiving because somewhere in their warped religious heads, they think they are special, more entitled to life than the people who died. They do not realize that staying alive in this country is like the lottery and no one is spared from this disaster called Nigeria, because this country is designed to kill you. It could have been anyone on that road.
Nigeria is evidence that prayer alone does not work, we have been praying since 1960 and the country just keeps getting worse. Do you know what happens to a country that prays and does nothing to fix the issues? It becomes a Disaster.
Will prayers build the infrastructures that we need in the country? We do not pay our taxes to God, we pay it to the Government and we need to hold the Government for such failures.
This is one too many accidents of this kind. If it’s not a tanker with a failing brakes, it’s a container falling over vehicles on the busy roads killing people. How long will this keep happening? Today, i still saw a video of a truck with containers on it, moving with one tyre missing from the back and i shuddered. If we do not act now Nigeria will kill us all. You are not safe in your bubble. No one is safe.
Naija Woman Chronicles 