My husband and I were preparing for our 16th wedding anniversary –Wife of Lagos container accident victim

Waking up to a beautiful and promising day on the morning of September 2, 2015, there was no reason to think that danger was lurking around the corner. Early morning prayers concluded, her husband and best friend of 16 years, Abubakar Sulaiman, had prepared to head out for his bureau de change business at the local wing of the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Ikeja, Lagos. Hugging and playing around with their five children – Sulaiman, 15, Idris, 14, Abdulrahman, 10, Nana, 7 and two-year-old Hauwa – that morning in his usual characteristic, the breadwinner of the family soon bid everyone goodbye, promising to bring home something special later in the evening.

But sadly, the 48-year-old never made it back as promised. A fully loaded 40ft container that had fallen off the Ojuelegba bridge in the heart of the city that afternoon and landed on his black Toyota Sports Utility Vehicle, ended his life and that of two other occupants – Umaru Sulaiman, 45, and Kamilu Umar, 38, in the cruelest manner. His death leaves the entire family in shock and in agony.Surrounded by a swarm of women, her eyes flicked from side to side, dejection, confusion and extreme soberness written all over her face. The presence of the dozens of visitors trooping in and out of the modest apartment did only little to heal Zainab’s bleeding wound. It is one of the most difficult periods in the life of the young mother – one that has pushed her resolve to the limits and broken her spirits into shreds. There is no word to describe her pains.

Abubakar

“I started having a strange feeling from afternoon of that day after calling his mobile phone several times without a response from him,” Abubakar’s wife, Zainab, told our correspondent in their Agege Lagos home on Friday. “I became restless; my thoughts were on him all the time,” she continued. “So, I called one of his friends later that evening to find out if they were together. The friend told me that they were not together and that he had gone out with another of his friends. By the time I called that one too he was not picking so I called one of my brother-in-laws to know if he had heard from my husband.

“Not satisfied, I started calling the number of his driver, Kamilu. Later a policeman picked the call and asked who I was, I told him and he said I should tell my husband to call the number and speak with them. I told him that my husband was with the driver I wanted to speak with and immediately they cut the call. When I called back they told me to tell an adult male in the family to call the number so they could speak. By the time the news was eventually broken to me, I fainted. I don’t know how I survived those moments,” she said amid sobs as the scores of young and middle-aged women around her made spirited attempts to console her.

Three days without Abubakar has left the once happy home in a shadow of its old self. Even though a portrait of him smiling brightly hangs in the family’s living room, the manner of his unexpected and painful death appears to have brought constant darkness into the home. Zainab told Saturday PUNCH that their lives would never remain the same without their breadwinner.

“He promised to have us celebrate our 16-year wedding anniversary on October 24,” she cuts in solemnly. “We were both looking forward to that special day. But death has ended that dream. The children cry every night, asking after their father. Words cannot tell the vacuum we feel in our hearts. Life can never be the same without him,” she said before burying her face in a small towel. The sight would certainly melt even the hardest of hearts.

Back at the family house of the Sulaimans in another part of Agege, the influx of sympathisers – men, women and even children – was almost endless on Friday when our correspondent visited the place. Even dogs and goats around the area seem to understand the calamity that had just befallen the family – they all took strategic positions in the road leading to the compound, glancing at each visitor with a mournful look. At the veranda of the compound converged several young and middle-aged men on mats. They were discussing the latest event and brainstorming on the way forward. Among them was Usman, the immediate younger sibling of the late Abubakar. He gave a chilling insight into what manner of pain the family was passing through and how the tragic incident had crushed dreams and left a host of challenges on their doorpost. The situation, he says, leaves them deeply confused.

Usman

“I was out of the house for most part of the day and didn’t return home until night that Wednesday,” he began. “While I was in bathroom, calls kept coming on my phones; I thought they were business calls which I could pick later because I was very tired at that point. But after praying, I decided to check my phone and later called one of my relatives who immediately asked if I had heard what happened. The person said my brother was involved in an accident. By the time we rushed down to Ojuelegba, another person called us that we shouldn’t go to the Surulere police station where the matter was being handled but that we should to the Mainland Hospital in Yaba. On getting there, they took us straight to their mortuary, that was when we actually knew that they were dead,” he said.

Dumbfounded at that point, Usman needed to dig deep within his arsenal for the strength and courage to relay the news to their aged and hypertensive mother – Hajia Fatima. It was one year after the family suffered a similar loss. The last child of the home, Mukthar, had died in a terrible road accident last year in Katsina State immediately after securing a job with a telecommunications firm. It was barely two weeks to his wedding. It was a big blow to the entire household. The wound had yet to fully heal before tragedy knocked on the family’s door again – this time taking Abubakar, their eldest child.

“There was no way I could relay such message to our mother,” Usman explains, emotions almost betraying him. “We had to keep the news away from his wife and our mother because the two of them are hypertensive; such news would break them down. The news was broken to them the next morning. We had to call our elderly Hausa women to break the news to them and stay with them. Our mother cried uncontrollably at the news because Mukthar’s death, our last born, is still fresh in our minds.

“The three of them in the vehicle at the time of the accident, were heading back home from Apapa where they had gone to transact a business. One of them, Kamilu, used to live here at the family house before getting an apartment of his own recently. He had four children while Umar, the third person in the car with them, has eight children. We are all related,” he said.

Sadly, Kamilu’s newly born child was christened on Friday – two days after death claimed his life in the most tragic manner, ending his dreams and throwing his family into a season of endless mourning. His wife and children have since been moved to their native Kano following their burial at the Agege cemetery on Thursday evening. They would continue their journey without their 38-year-old father and breadwinner.

[/media-credit] Zainab surrounded by three of her children

Curiously several days after the tragic incident that shook the entire nation, there has been no word from the police, owners of the ill-fated truck or the Lagos State Government on whether there would be compensation for children and wives of the victims. Usman says the situation leaves them confused by the day.

“Though, the Governor of Lagos State, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode, sent some representatives to our house on Thursday, we haven’t heard anything from any quarters since then. The victims have families and young children. How will they survive without their fathers and breadwinners? We are talking about 17 children without fathers, how will they cope in the years to come? The problem is too much for the family alone to handle.

“The police also haven’t said much. Though, we saw the tanker driver at the station but we don’t even know if there is a company involved, nobody has told us anything yet. Before we even got the corpses of our brothers was tough. In fact it was a big battle at the Mainland Hospital mortuary where staff were asking us to pay N250, 000 before the bodies would be released to us despite instructions from the Governor that they should be released. It took hours of protest from us before the bodies were eventually released,” he said.

The casualty from the latest container tragedy could have been worse had the heavy metal also pinned a white car inches away from Abubakar’s SUV. By a whisker, the vehicle and its occupant – Lasisi Akeem – were not touched, reminding us of how much could have gone down under the massive weight of the 40ft ‘monster’.

Painful as the Ojuelegba incident is, it is not the first time containers carried by trucks would crush lives and end dreams – the latest is among an ever swelling list of deaths that continue to occur across the country on daily basis.

On January 23, 2015 for example, a middle-aged woman, Anthonia and her thrid son, Chibuzor, were crushed to death after an unlatched container fell on them at the Ketu bus-stop where they were waiting to board a vehicle to Mile 12. On July 25, 2012, a young lady had been killed at the Berger end of the Lagos/Ibadan expressway when a container tipped off the back of a truck and fell on her. Four months later on November 21, 2012, three persons riding in a Mazda car lost their lives in similar fashion. The incident happened along the Badagary/Seme expressway. On June 7, 2013, an unidentified man died along the Agege Motor Road after a container fell on an Eko meat van. The victim, said to be a manager with a top mobile phone dealer in the Ikeja area of the city, was walking to the office when the incident happened. Two occupants of the meat van later died in the hospital, according to reports. The driver of the truck was said to have lost control of the wheel after one of his tyres burst. The list is endless.

Calls for the outlawing of articulated vehicles carrying containers within Lagos and other major cities across the country during the day, have often ended with every major tragedy. Authorities continue to look away while trucks and their heavy baggage continue to spill blood and kill dreams.

Punch