A passenger train, reported to be coming from Kano State, derailed last night at the Lagos Terminus of the Nigerian Railway Corporation, NRC, in Iddo, killing the driver and the locomotive assistant. The accident happened around 9:45pm.
An eyewitness said if the train had not rammed into another stationary train, the damage would have been worse.
He stated further that the train hit one of the concrete pillars in the terminal and completely destroyed the ticketing section of the NRC.
The train left Kano on Wednesday and was on its return trip when the accident occurred Sunday night. The accident was due to a brake failure and the driver could not stop it. Some people said the driver noticed the faulty brake when it stopped at Agege terminus and was not able to stop in Ikeja at all,” the witness said. As at the time of filing this report, one of the deceased was still trapped inside the cockpit as officials said they have not been able to remove his corpse.
A brother of the deceased, who identified himself as Sulaimon, said NRC as a corporation does not care about the safety of its members of staff. The situation is a bad example. If this happened abroad, the family would be adequately carried along in the whole process. As at now, no information has been given to the family as regards the state of the corpse. We were just told to wait.
“Imagine, one of the corpses has not been removed by now. The officials said we should wait,” he lamented
P.M.NEWS gathered that the corpse yet to be removed is that of the assistant locomotive driver.
Our correspondent also gathered that President Goodluck Jonathan is expected in Lagos tomorrow to commission some newly acquired locomotives. It is not yet claer if the commissioning would still take place tomorrow. via pmnewsnigeria.com
