Truck Kills One As Tricycle Riders Shut Down Owerri In Protest

The Aba – Owerri Expressway end was on Tuesday shut down by incensed tricycle riders in Owerri, the Imo State capital, in protest of the death of one of them who was crushed to death by a BUA company truck.
The yet-to-be-identified tricycle rider was earlier jammed to death by the driver of the truck on the Owerri-Port Harcourt Road, before the Nigeria Union of Journalists’ office.

An eyewitness, Silas Okere, a staff of Owerri Capital Development Authority told our correspondent at the accident scene that it was in a bid to escape some touts working for Environmental Transformation commission, an Agency of the state government that the auto crash occurred.

According to Okere, the truck driver with the number plate, Jigawa KZR 217 ZT veered off the tarred road in a bid to beat the ENTRACO officials who were giving him a hot chase in Siena vehicle.

The eyewitness said that while the truck driver veered off the road, it rammed on the tricycle operator who was parked and killed him instantly.

According to him, immediately the honour occurred the ENTRACO officials fled, while the driver of the truck, his conductor and his police escort equally fled, abandoning their truck which was loaded with 600 bags of cement.

Angered by the death of one of them, the tricycle riders besieged the ENTRACO corporate office on Owerri – Aba road to set it ablaze.

They were however prevented from carrying out the act by some police officers, led by the Owerri Area commander, Francis Bassong, an assistant commissioner of police, who condoned them off.

The tricyclelists then results to blocking of the major read in total expression of their anger, causing vehicular and pedestrian movement with the area.

The protesters, however called the state Governor, Rochas Okorocha, to sanitize the Commission.

The managing Director of ENTRACO, Jeff Nwoha, said that as much he regretted the death of the tricycle operator, his death was not caused by his men.


Punch