The Corps Marshal and Chief Executive of FRSC, Mr. Osita Chidoka
There
are strong indications that the Federal Road Safety Corps is shielding
the alleged driver of the convoy vehicle that caused the accident which
killed a former president of the Academic Staff Union of Universities,
Prof. Festus Iyayi at Banda village, near Lokoja, Kogi State on Tuesday.
Iyayi was travelling to Kano for a
meeting of the National Executive Council of ASUU when a Toyota Hilux
pick-up van in the convoy of Kogi State Governor, Idris Wada, crashed
into the bus he was travelling, killing him instantly and injuring two
others.
The Kogi State FRSC sector commander,
Olakunle Motajo, told one of our correspondents in Abuja on the
telephone that the report of the investigation into the accident was not
ready.
Motajo “The report is not ready yet, we
are still working on it; don’t worry, I will call you whenever it is
ready,” he said and terminated the phone call.
Calls made to his phone to ask him further questions were not responded to.
The corps had blamed ‘wrongful
overtaking’ by the convoy vehicle for the accident, saying its
preliminary investigation showed that the driver of the pick-van was to
blame for the crash.
Motajo, who said this in an interview
with the News Agency of Nigeria, however, recanted when he was contacted
by one of our correspondents on Wednesday.
“Motajo said, “I never blamed the
governor’s convoy for the crash, and I didn’t speak to anyone because
the investigation is not yet concluded. It is my men that are carrying
out the investigation and they are not done yet. By tomorrow morning
(Thursday), the report would be ready, so call me, I will give you the
full details of our findings.”
On Thursday, the Corps Education Officer
of the FRSC, Jonas Agwu, did not respond to several calls to his phone
and the questions sent to him on the high rate of accidents involving
convoy drivers and the refusal of the corps to prosecute errant drivers
in the convoys of men and women in power.
The questions sent to Agwu are: “Why has FRSC been shying away from prosecuting errant convoy drivers?
“Is it true that the corps is unwilling
to release the report of its investigation into the accident involving
Wada’s convoy because it did not want to upset the governor?
“Why is the FRSC shielding the killer driver?
Rather than respond to the questions,
Agwu simply said he had been busy, adding that he was “waiting to see if
there is any available report (on the accident).”
But in separate interviews, a Senior
Advocate of Nigeria, Mike Ozekhome, Lagos-based lawyers, Festus Keyamo
and Bamidele Aturu, warned the government and the Federal Road Safety
Commission against politicising the accident that killed Iyayi.
They expressed worry at different accounts of the incident attributed to the FRSC on the cause of the accident.
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