ALL passengers in a commercial bus going to Lagos from Ibadan were on Tuesday evening were burnt to death after colliding with a tanker laden with petroleum product on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway.
The accident took place two days after a similar incident occurred at Boluwaji on the same expressway in Ibadan when a Lagos-bound bus somersaulted several times and caught fire. In the first accident on Sunday evening, all the passengers, according to road safety officials, escaped death, while the driver was trapped and burnt beyond recognition.
Daily Sun gathered that in the latest accident, immediately the two vehicles collided, the fuel tanker exploded, making it impossible for any of the passengers to survive.
The road accident was said to have occurred in the vicinity of a gas company, Southern Energy, along the expressway in Ibadan, at 8:12p.m.
The incident and another accident on Lagos- Ibadan Expressway on Wednesday morning, which details were still sketchy at the time of filing this report, reportedly led to traffic congestion on the highway. Many commuters going to either Lagos or Ibadan were held up for several hours in the logjam.
The combined team of the police, Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) and Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) diverted the traffic till the wreckage of the accident was cleared off the road yesterday afternoon.
Spokesperson of FRSC, Oyo State command, Mr. Seun Onijala, who confirmed the accident said all the passengers in the bus with registration number LAGOS AGL 866 XA, were burnt beyond recognition.
But, he could not confirm the number of casualties, saying eight skeletons of the burnt passengers were recovered. He said further investigation would show how many passengers boarded the bus from where it took off.
Also, Onijala could not confirm what happened to the driver and probably other occupants of the tanker, saying further investigation would reveal details of the accident.