SAD: Tears flow for Ijanikin school children’s death

There were three men sitting at the carpenter’s workshop near the central mosque opposite Adeniran Ogunsanya College of Education, Ijanikin, Lagos. Which one among these men could be Mr. Odu Samuel, popularly known as Alagbede, the father of Odu Timothy, one of the school children crushed to death last week by a reckless commercial bus driver as they were crossing the express road to their school?
I had traced that name, Alagbede, given to me by a young man, to a carpenter’s workshop where the three men sat. Which of these three men sitting here could be Alagbede? I decided to speak to the man wearing the saddest face. “Are you Mr. Alagbde, sir?

I am a journalist,” I had to tell him the truth from the beginning. He kept looking at me, not sure whether he should disclose his identity or not. “It will be good sir,” I continued, “for you to talk about your dead child in the newspaper. It can help drivers on the road to be more careful as well as for pedestrians when crossing the highways. Besides, sympathisers might read your story and decide to reach you and help you in one way or the other,” I told him.Ijanikin-school....Continue..

He was quite a man, obviously not easily given to tears, but I was certain I saw some tear stain on his eyeballs. “I am very sorry sir,” I said battling with my own tears. I cannot say I am quite a man when it comes to tears. It flows freely from my eyes. Terrible things happen to all of us in this wicked world.
Those kids crushed to death while going to school could have as well been my own kids who also cross the expressway everyday to get to their own school.

Perhaps sympathising with me due to my own tears, Mr. Odu (Alagbede) decided to attend to me. Reluctantly, he pulled his phone out from his pocket and made a call, then motioned to me to follow him. We walked quite a distance through many other compounds before we passed through a passage and got to the backyard. It was already night, and I became apprehensive, remembering the ritual killing stories we published last week as our cover story in Saturday Vanguard.

Alagbede offered me a bench to sit on. There was another elderly man there who gave his name as Rotimi, Alagbede’s relation. Soon, a young hefty man barged in, introducing himself as Idowu, a LASU graduate of Banking and Finance. It was Mr. Idowu that Alagbede had called on the phone while we were at his workshop. The three men spoke for sometime in Yoruba before Mr. Idowu turned to me. “Yes, sir, who are you?”
After I had explained myself, he said, “No, I will not allow my brother (Alagbede) to talk about the dead child. We have buried the child and made peace with the driver who killed the children. We settled the matter at the Bale’s palace and for us to talk about it again on the pages of the newspaper would make it look as if we reneged on our promise.”

“We want to leave everything to God,” Rotimi now spoke. “That was exactly the same way his brother died,” he said pointing at Alagbede, “knocked to death by a vehicle on the road. If it is the handwork of our enemies, we leave everything to God.”

After we exchanged phone numbers I left the family feeling as if I was the one bereaved.
Early morning of Thursday 10 July, 2014, Mrs. Yusuf had prepared her two 9 year old twins, Taiwo and Kehinde for school. A seamstress who has a shop at Vesper bus stop market, Ijanikin, Mrs. Yusuf and her twins lived at Ijanikin around Deeper Life bus stop before she relocated to another place after Agbara due to increase of house rent. That morning, they took a bus from their new location and came down at Deeper Life bus stop, opposite the children school, the Anglican Primary School, Ijanikin.

Mrs. Yusuf gripped the arms of her twins, Taiwo and Kehinde, on each of her arms ready to cross the expressway into the school. Other children were also behind her, including 12 year-old Odu Timothy, Alagbede’s son, all ready to cross over.

The neighbourhood watchmen provided by the chairman of the Local Council Development Authority to help stop traffic every morning for the schoolchildren to cross were there doing their work. They succeeded in stopping the traffic on both side. Mrs. Yusuf and her twins, followed by Odu Samuel and the other children moved and crossed the first lane. As they entered the second lane, a commercial bus driver pulled out from the line of other waiting motorists, swerved them and ran into the schoolchildren, narrowly missing Mrs. Yusuf but crushed Taiwo and Timothy.

Timothy died on the spot, while Taiwo was rushed to the hospital where he died. Teachers of the Anglican Primary who spoke to Saturday Vanguard, pleading anonymity, said the driver of the bus who killed the children was cursing the men of the neighbourhood watch for stopping traffic and wasting his time.
When the driver saw what he had done, he abandoned the bus and took to his heels. Angry mobs then set the bus ablaze. He was later apprehended by the police and is still in their custody.

“Even if they execute the driver, will the dead children come back to life?” one of the teachers queried. Considering the distance between the school and the only overhead footbridge at the college of education, it could easily be seen that it is difficult for the schoolchildren to go there to use the footbridge. So the only alternative left for them is to cross the highway, and many schools are like this in Lagos state.

The impatience of the commercial bus drivers which led to this tragedy is a typical behavior of most Lagos commercial bus drivers, even sometimes, private car drivers. Sometime ago at the Navy gate, Okokomaiko, a similar accident almost happened. The naval officers tried to wave a commercial bus driver to a stop for the schoolchildren to cross the highway, but he defied them and drove on, almost running into the school kids. So they chased after him and caught him. The naval officers almost killed him that day after they seized the bus and drove it into the barracks.

There is a campaign all of us have to join hands to stage, and that is the campaign to get people to have regard for children. Our society has no regard for children. We use them as slaves, molest them sexually, and do not give a damn crushing them on the roads as they attempt to cross the road into their school. The crushed Taiwo Yusuf and Samuel Odu of the Anglican Primary School, Ijanikin, Lagos could have been the kids of any of us. May their innocent souls rest in peace.