The crash was the latest tragedy to befall travellers on Nigeria’s perilous roads, plagued with accidents due to a combination of reckless driving, overloading and poor maintenance.
“Two Toyota Hiace Buses… travelling in opposite directions had a head-on collision and thereafter went off in flames. Twenty nine persons — eleven of them burnt beyond recognition — have so far been confirmed dead”, national police spokesman Frank Mba said in a statement.
The accident occurred in the state’s Nengere area, the statement added. The injured were taken to a hospital in the nearby city of Potiskum.
The head of the road safety commission in Yobe, Usman Masari, said both drivers had been speeding. He described both buses as 18-seaters, but drivers routinely cram extra passengers into vehicles to maximise their income per journey.
A similar crash killed 33 people near Potiskum in 2010, when two commuter buses collided and caught fire.
The police statement lamented the “incessant” accidents on Nigeria’s highways, considered among the most dangerous in the world. Police urged Nigerians to avoid “speeding, over loading and flagrant disobedience of road traffic laws and regulations”.
More than 17,000 people died in about 31,000 road accidents across Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, between 2007 and 2009, according to the federal road safety agency’s 2010 report, the most recent published.
AFP
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