Some drivers employed by business mogul, Aliko Dangote, on Friday refused all entreaties to assist their colleague, who was involved in an accident along the Owerri-Port Harcourt Road.
The incident was blamed on the alleged negligence of the contractors handling the rehabilitation of the road.
The accident occurred early hours of Friday, January 15 at House of Assembly junction, Owerri, the Imo State capital, as Dangote truck conveying cement from Kogi to Port Harcourt, Rivers State ran into a ditch dug on the middle of the road by the contractors handling the road construction, without any barricade to ward-off drivers from that part of the road.
The driver identified simply as Solomon, according to our sources is a 36-year-old single man and a Muslim by faith.
But as his colleagues were passing through, all pleas by onlookers to assist their colleague fell on deaf ears.
One of his colleagues, Chimezie Iwuezi, later pulled over when he recognized the deceased as his friend.
Iwuezi, who hails from Izombe, Oguta, blamed the accident on the ditch.
He said out of many Dangote drivers who were beckoned to identify the victim, he was the only one who stopped and picked some dismembered body parts of the deceased, wrapped it in a new bedspread of the driver and helped to deposit it at the mortuary, before the family members came and took the body for burial, in line with Islamic rite.
Also narrating the incident, Inspector Isa, a security guard at Owerri Capital Development Authority (OCDA), said the accident happened around 3 am.
According to him, “I heard the loud sound of the accident and rushed out with my fellow security guard and we were joined by a driver whose vehicle also got spoilt at that point. When we looked around, we saw the smashed body of the driver and discovered he fell off through the windscreen of the vehicle when it hit a ditch along the road and the truck smashed him, before being halted by a basement on the other side of the road.”