Passengers in critical conditions as bus somersaults on Third Mainland Bridge

It was quite a terrible scene in the evening of Thursday, February 3, when a bus loaded with goods and passengers somersaulted on the Third Mainland Bridge in Lagos State with passengers in the bus sustaining various degrees of injuries in the process.

The incident happened around 5:20 p.m. at the point called Third Axial Road inward Iyana Oworo on the Third Mainland Bridge when the driver of the bus, which was ostensibly overloaded, lost control of the vehicle as a result of burst tyre, causing the vehicle to somersault.

I was coming from Lagos Island when I saw the overturned bus with onlookers clustering around the scene of the incident and I decided to ask an official of the Lagos State Traffic Management Authority (LASTMA) what went wrong.

One of the officials told me that they received a distress call over the incident and on getting to the scene, they found out that the driver of the bus lost control when the vehicle had a tyre burst.

This caused the bus driver to lose control of the vehicle and the bus eventually hit the road divider before it somersaulted, with the passengers inside sustaining various degrees of injuries.

I was also told that the injured passengers were rushed to a nearby hospital by officials of the Lagos State Ambulance Service (LASAMBUS) who also got to the scene after receiving a distress call.

The various goods in the bus were seen littering the road while the situation caused a massive traffic gridlock while LASTMA officials and policemen were seen making frantic efforts to control the traffic situation.

By the time I left the scene of the accident, the overturned bus was still on the road while some traffic officials were seen removing some of the loads that were on the road.