I am waiting for Prof Wole Soyinka’s reaction on the near-death of Nigeria’s boxing icon, Anthony Joshua on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway Monday.
Imagine the revulsion of the Nobel laureate on the moribund state of the Federal Road Safety Commission, FRSC, the agency he founded about four decades ago!
Otherwise, how do we describe the FRSC that has promulgated a Speed limiting law and failed woefully to enforce same? What has happened to the multi-million Naira Trailer Parks built by the Ogun State government to prevent indiscriminate parking of trailers and broken vehicles on the expressway?
The tragic road crash which claimed the lives of two close associates of Joshua — Kevin Latif Ayodele and Sina Ghami, both 36 — is not merely an unfortunate accident. It is a blazing indictment of systemic failures, institutional negligence, and a government that has normalized preventable deaths on our highways.
While the nation breathes a sigh of relief that Joshua survived with minor injuries, we must confront an uncomfortable truth: this tragedy, like many before it, was entirely preventable. The collision with a stationary truck near Sagamu exposes the rot at the core of Nigeria’s road safety infrastructure — a rot characterized by enforcement lethargy, abandoned infrastructure, and a federal agency that appears more adept at issuing press releases than protecting lives.
The FRSC’s preliminary report attributes the crash to “excessive speed and wrongful overtaking.” While driver error undoubtedly played a role, this narrative conveniently deflects attention from the agency’s own glaring failures. The critical question nobody in authority wants to answer is this: Why was a broken-down truck allowed to remain stationary on one of Nigeria’s busiest expressways?
Reports indicate that the truck had been parked on the roadside for an extended period — some accounts said three days. This raises fundamental questions about the FRSC’s highway patrol effectiveness. Where were the routine patrols? Why wasn’t the hazard identified and removed? Why weren’t warning signs erected? The FRSC’s subsequent response after the crash is commendable, but it is cold comfort when the agency failed in its primary duty: prevention.
The corps has spent years touting its speed enforcement initiatives, yet speed limits remain largely theoretical on Nigerian highways. Electronic speed monitoring devices, otherwise called speed limiters, are nowhere to be found. The absence of systematic enforcement means that speed limit laws exist only on paper — another tragic example of Nigeria’s enforcement gap, where regulations abound but compliance is optional.
Even more scandalous is the fate of the trailer parks constructed by the Ogun State Government specifically to address the menace of stationary trucks on highways. The Gateway Trailer Park at Ogere, commissioned years ago with much fanfare, tells the story of Nigeria’s infrastructure tragedy.
In 2015, the Ogun State Government had to issue evacuation notices for abandoned vehicles at the very facility meant to house them. By 2019, stakeholders were calling for the park’s “revival” — an admission that it had essentially died. In 2021, the state government announced a partnership with the federal government to “resuscitate and develop” the park — further confirmation of its dormancy.
What happened? The answer is depressingly familiar: lack of maintenance, inadequate management, absence of enforcement compelling truck owners to use the facilities, and the slow decay that afflicts most government projects in Nigeria once the commissioning photographs fade.
Ogun State built these parks at considerable expense to taxpayers. Yet trucks continue to park dangerously on expressway shoulders, creating death traps for unsuspecting motorists. This represents not just wasted resources but a betrayal of public trust. The parks stand as monuments to governmental incompetence — infrastructure built for political optics rather than operational utility.
How grim statistics tell the story
The numbers are staggering and shameful. By mid-2025, nearly 3,000 lives had been lost to road crashes in just six months, according to FRSC data. By September 2025, over 7,700 crashes had claimed nearly 4,000 lives and injured 24,000 more. In 2024 alone, 5,421 people died in road accidents — a seven percent increase from the previous year.
These are not just statistics; they are sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, friends and colleagues whose lives were cut short on highways that should have been safe. Each number represents a family plunged into grief, a community traumatized, a future extinguished.
The causes are well-documented: speeding, brake failure, poor road conditions, lack of emergency response infrastructure, and critically, the absence of enforcement of existing safety regulations. Yet year after year, the death toll mounts while the authorities issue statements, promise investigations, and then return to business as usual.
The enforcement gap: Where rules mean nothing
Nigeria suffers from what can only be described as an enforcement crisis. We have laws against speed violations, regulations requiring roadworthy vehicles, rules prohibiting parking on highways, and mandates for emergency vehicle removal. On paper, Nigeria’s road safety framework is comprehensive. In practice, it is non-existent.
The FRSC lacks the requisite personnel, technology, and apparently the political will to enforce these regulations systematically. Corrupt officers are more interested in collecting bribes at checkpoints than ensuring compliance with safety standards. State governments build infrastructure and then abandon it to decay. Truck owners ignore designated parks because they know there are no consequences.
Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan captured this failure perfectly when she said: “Rules without enforcement are meaningless. The Federal Road Safety Corps must be empowered and compelled to fully enforce road safety regulations across all highways in Nigeria, without fear or favour.” She is right. But empowerment alone is insufficient if there is no accountability for failure. The FRSC must be held responsible when stationary trucks turn into death traps, when speed limits are ignored with impunity, and when broken-down vehicles languish on highways for days.
Another glaring deficiency exposed by this tragedy is Nigeria’s non-existent highway emergency response infrastructure. Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan has rightly called for the establishment of dedicated highway emergency rescue teams equipped with ambulances, trauma care facilities, and rapid response protocols.
Currently, accident victims depend on the goodwill of passersby and the sluggish response of under-equipped agencies. The difference between life and death often comes down to response time, yet Nigeria has no systematic emergency medical services along its major highways. Rest stations where fatigued drivers can recuperate safely are virtually absent. This is criminally negligent for a nation that claims to be Africa’s largest economy.
The cost of government failure
The Anthony Joshua crash has garnered international attention because of the celebrity involved. President Bola Tinubu personally called to convey condolences. Governors of Lagos and Ogun states monitored the situation. The British High Commission sent a delegation. This is appropriate.
But what of the thousands of ordinary Nigerians who die annually under similar circumstances? Every single day, Nigerians die on these roads, and their deaths are reduced to footnotes in newspaper reports. This selective concern is itself an indictment of how little value our government places on ordinary Nigerian lives.
The time for platitudes and promises is over. Nigeria needs immediate, concrete action President Tinubu may need to do a surgical operation on the structure, operations and management of the FRSC. The Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation is ill-prepared to supervise the agency. Road safety matters cannot be governed by political manipulations.
Going forward, the FRSC must conduct emergency sweeps of all major highways to remove stationary vehicles and hazards. Any truck broken down for more than four hours should be towed.
State governments must enforce regulations requiring heavy-duty vehicles to use designated parking facilities. Penalties for non-compliance must be severe and consistently applied. Specifically, the Ogun State Government must immediately audit all trailer parks, determine why they are underutilized, address operational deficiencies, and ensure they serve their intended purpose.
After much prevarication, the FRSC must immediately deploy electronic speed monitoring across all federal highways and make speed violations costly enough to change unruly behaviours by drivers.
The Minister of Works must be mandated to establish highway emergency teams with comprehensive coverage on major routes, equipped with ambulances and medical personnel while also embarking on regular safety assessments of all highways, identifying and removing hazards before they claim lives.
FRSC officials must face consequences when preventable deaths occur in their jurisdictions due to enforcement failures.
The Lagos-Ibadan Expressway has been dubbed “the corridor of death” for good reason. It is Nigeria’s busiest highway, yet it remains one of the most dangerous. This latest tragedy is not an aberration; it is the predictable result of years of institutional failure, governmental negligence, and a culture of impunity.
Anthony Joshua’s survival should not be the end of this story. It must be the catalyst for fundamental reform. Kevin Latif Ayodele and Sina Ghami cannot be brought back, but their deaths can be given meaning if they finally force Nigeria to confront its road safety crisis with the urgency it deserves.
Nigerian highways have indeed become “corridors of sorrow,” as Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan said. But sorrow without action is merely sentiment. The Nigerian government must prove that it values the lives of its citizens more than photo opportunities at infrastructure commissioning ceremonies.
The FRSC must transform from a reactive agency that counts bodies to a proactive force that prevents deaths. Ogun State must explain why taxpayer-funded trailer parks stand idle while trucks create hazards on expressways. And ultimately, the Nigerian people must demand more from their leaders than condolence messages and empty promises.
