After a Bus Rapid Transit, BRT, bus crushed a 16-year-old school boy, Daniel Ezekiel, to death at Ogolonto Bus Stop, along Ikorodu Road in Lagos, his guardians, Dr. and Mrs. Olajide Oyesanya, are yet to come to terms with the tragic reality of their loss.
They are still in shock that their beloved Ezekiel is gone forever, and more so by the bizarre and cruel manner of his death. This is because the bus had on impact crushed and decapitated Ezekiel.
In fact, Mrs. Oyesanya said on waking up Tuesday morning, she momentarily forgot that Ezekiel was gone and was waiting for him to knock on her door and say: “Grandma, I want to go to school”. But that knock never came. For now, theirs is a lamentation of pain laced with regret. The regret is that their wish of sending Ezekiel to school so that he would become great had ended in tragedy. Yet when young Daniel left home in the morning of that fateful Monday, March 5, 2018, little did he or his guardians nurse any premonition that death was lurking like a remorseless, vengeful reaper on the way. Oyesanya told Vanguard Metro that after consuming a heavy meal that morning the boy was in high spirits and cheerfully waved them goodbye as he left home for the school. “But we didn’t know that was the last time we will see him,” they wept, adding: “We fed Ezekiel at 7:15am but picked up his corpse two hours later, at about 9:45am.”
Narrating their experiences on what transpired on the fateful day, a distraught Mrs. Oyesanya informed that since she enrolled Ezekiel in school last January, he had always taken his breakfast by 7:15am before proceeding to school at 7:20am. “And on that fateful day, he left home to school. But I was alerted of the incident that happened by someone who told me to find out if Ezekiel was safe. Immediately I started calling his teacher, but she refused to pick my call. I thought they were on assembly ground so I called the school director who also didn’t pick my calls. “At that moment, I knew there was a problem. I was confused and my husband also called to inform me to proceed to his school. On my way, someone told me that Ezekiel had been rushed to Ikorodu General Hospital. “When I got to the hospital premises, I was told to identify the lifeless body of Ezekiel; at that moment, I knew I had lost our dear child. I couldn’t believe my eyes that the child I fed at exactly 7:15am had become a corpse for me to pick at exactly 9:45am,” she said amidst tears.
Ezekiel’s last moment
Sources said that Ezekiel alighted from a cab with other students, and they were being taking across in batches to the other side of the BRT corridor by the school security official. But misunderstanding the flag man’s signal, the boy was said to have attempted dashing across the BRT corridor, believing that the road was clear. Unfortunately he was hit by a fast-moving BRT bus. As a result of the impact, his head severed from his body. The driver was said to have taken to his heels immediately, for fear of possible mob action against him. Mrs. Oyesanya said that Ezekiel’s family in Kaduna had been notified about his tragic demise. She informed that “their eldest sister lives around here”, adding: their parents gave birth to three of them. His father is late and the mother is in Kaduna”.
Vanguard