LAST week, nine persons were killed at Ojuelegba in Lagos State when a container attached to a lorry fell on the bus in which they were commuting. This kind of disaster has been a recurrent incident in Lagos and across the country, and it is most unfortunate. Indeed, the Ojuelegba horrible but patently avoidable tragedy was reportedly the fourth in recent times! That can only happen in a country where the government and some people do not value human life. The authorities ought to be concerned about these needless deaths arising from plain carelessness and negligence, especially in a clime where seemingly intractable security challenges are also causing loss of lives on a daily basis.
Why are the drivers of container-bearing articulated vehicles averse to the safer practice of latching containers to their trucks? And if the drivers/ vehicle owners do not care a hoot about safety practices and procedures around the transportation of containers, what about the authorities in charge of enforcement? Could it mean that operatives of the Lagos State Traffic Management Agency (LATSMA), Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) and other agencies are unbothered by their abysmal dereliction of duty which has occasioned needless fatalities time and again? The laxity on the part of supervisory bodies and the disobedience of the operators of trucks that carry containers are both criminal and should henceforth be treated as such. Otherwise, this poor attitude to the safety of human life may not stop anytime soon. It is a sad commentary, but the truth is that containers only fall in motion in a carefree environment where governance is lax and human life is not valued.
It is rather strange that the critical stakeholders in the transportation of containers are finding it difficult to obey the simple safety instruction to latch their containers to their trucks, and the authorities, too, seem to be lackadaisical about enforcement, whereas in more organised and functional spaces, containers are only transported in lorry cabins where they are not liable to fall out and thus constitute danger. That implies additional investments in the construction of cabins on trucks’ flat beds by the owners but the safety of human lives is more important than the cost of such investments. But it would appear that the Nigerian government is not bothered at all that containers continue to fall indiscriminately on the roads, resulting in multiple deaths every time.
We strongly believe that it is time the government began to insist on containers being transported in lorry cabins as the idea of latching them to trucks has not been effective largely due to disobedience and lack of rigorous enforcement. But a paradigm shift that ensures that containers are carried in lorry cabins will make it obvious to all whenever a container is borne on a truck’s open flat bed. And that will make apprehending and punishing offenders much easier. Ordinarily, one would have expected these recurrent and avoidable deaths from falling containers to have disturbed those in government to the point of forcing them to do things differently, but that has not happened. It is customary for government officials to join other Nigerians in lamenting the untimely deaths of victims of falling containers with hardly any mention of the measures to adopt to obviate future occurrence, and the sanctions to be applied on operators and officials whose laxity contributed to such avoidable fatalities.
It should be emphasised that the government has a duty to save innocent commuters from unwarranted death on the roads, and it becomes irresponsible, and even criminally liable if the purpose of this crucial duty is not achieved due to its own laxity. Clearly, the lax attitude of the government and lorry owners/drivers in preventing the ceaseless deaths from these falling containers does not portray the country well and it is time for all stakeholders to act decisively and stop the carnage. Government, in particular, must show and assure the citizenry that it cares, and more significantly, that it has learnt from the latest avoidable deaths. And we believe that one of the surest and pragmatic ways to do that is to stop the transportation of containers outside of cabins on the road.
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