OOU students protest, demand compensation for dead colleagues

Students of the Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago Iwoye, Ogun State, on Monday protested over the death of eight of their colleagues in an auto crash on Friday.

Their action resulted in heavy traffic on the Sagamu-Benin Expressway for over an hour.

The accident occurred at Ilishan Junction along Sagamu-Benin Expressway, Ogun State, when a truck laden with a container, whose driver allegedly drove against the traffic, rammed into a commercial bus in which the students and other passengers were travelling to Lagos.

It killed 12 of them, with only one person surviving.

The students, who stormed the accident scene on Monday in two luxury buses and two Mazda buses, wore black T-shirts and trousers.

Many of them broke down in tears when they saw the wreckage of the commercial bus, strewn with some clothes and torn notebooks of the victims.

They, thereafter, became angry and started hurling stones and other objects on drivers of articulated vehicles on the expressway.

Some of their lecturers, including the Chairman, Academic Staff Union of Universities, Dr. Deji Agboola, stopped the students, who wanted to set the “offending container” ablaze.

“The content may explode and cause havoc,” Agboola warned them.

The protesting students carried placards, which variously read, ‘We say no to broad day movement of long vehicles,’ ‘We demand justice for the lost souls’, and ‘We say no to bad roads’, among others.

The students, who offered prayers in honour of their departed colleagues, later marched to the premises of the plastic manufacturing company, where the truck headed for and vandalised some of the articulated vehicles parked there.

Meanwhile, the South-West wing of the National Association of Nigerian Students has demanded N10m each compensation for the students who lost their lives in the auto crash.

They gave the plastic manufacturing company a seven-day ultimatum to pay the ‘compensation.’

In a statement by the President, Student Union Government, OOU, Adegbesan Adenola, Ogun State NANS Chairman, Okikiola Ogunsola, and Zone D Coordinator, NANS, Sunday Ashefon, the students urged the security agencies to apprehend the driver of the truck and commence his prosecution immediately.

They also called on the government to investigate the men of the Federal Road Safety Corps and the police on duty on that axis last Friday.

The statement read in part, “The state and federal law prohibiting articulated vehicles from plying the highways in the daytime should be enacted and rigorously supervised to ensure compliance, where such already exists.

“The necessary security agencies should be alert to their duties to monitor the movement of vehicles on the highway.”

Source: The Punch Newspaper