Surrounded by a swarm of women, her eyes
flicked from side to side, dejection, confusion and extreme soberness
written all over her face. The presence of the dozens of visitors
trooping in and out of the modest apartment did only little to heal
Zainab’s bleeding wound. It is one of the most difficult periods in the
life of the young mother – one that has pushed her resolve to the limits
and broken her spirits into shreds. There is no word to describe her
pains.
Waking up to a beautiful and promising
day on the morning of September 2, 2015, there was no reason to think
that danger was lurking around the corner. Early morning prayers
concluded, her husband and best friend of 16 years, Abubakar Sulaiman,
had prepared to head out for his bureau de change business at the local
wing of the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Ikeja, Lagos.
Hugging and playing around with their five children – Sulaiman, 15,
Idris, 14, Abdulrahman, 10, Nana, 7 and two-year-old Hauwa – that
morning in his usual characteristic, the breadwinner of the family soon
bid everyone goodbye, promising to bring home something special later in
the evening. But sadly, the 48-year-old never made it back as promised.
A fully loaded 40ft container that had fallen off the Ojuelegba bridge
in the heart of the city that afternoon and landed on his black Toyota
Sports Utility Vehicle, ended his life and that of two other occupants –
Umaru Sulaiman, 45, and Kamilu Umar, 38, in the cruelest manner. His
death leaves the entire family in shock and in agony.
“I started having a strange feeling from afternoon of that day after calling his mobile phone several times without a response from him,” Abubakar’s wife, Zainab said,in their Agege Lagos home on Friday. “I became restless; my thoughts were on him all the time,” she continued. “So, I called one of his friends later that evening to find out if they were together. The friend told me that they were not together and that he had gone out with another of his friends. By the time I called that one too he was not picking so I called one of my brother-in-laws to know if he had heard from my husband.
“Not satisfied, I started calling the number of his driver, Kamilu. Later a policeman picked the call and asked who I was, I told him and he said I should tell my husband to call the number and speak with them. I told him that my husband was with the driver I wanted to speak with and immediately they cut the call. When I called back they told me to tell an adult male in the family to call the number so they could speak. By the time the news was eventually broken to me, I fainted. I don’t know how I survived those moments,” she said amid sobs as the scores of young and middle-aged women around her made spirited attempts to console her.
Three days without Abubakar has left the
once happy home in a shadow of its old self. Even though a portrait of
him smiling brightly hangs in the family’s living room, the manner of
his unexpected and painful death appears to have brought constant
darkness into the home. Zainab said that their lives would never remain the same without their breadwinner.
“He promised to have us celebrate our 16-year wedding anniversary on October 24,” she cuts in solemnly. “We were both looking forward to that special day. But death has ended that dream. The children cry every night, asking after their father. Words cannot tell the vacuum we feel in our hearts. Life can never be the same without him,” she said before burying her face in a small towel. The sight would certainly melt even the hardest of hearts.
Back at the family house of the
Sulaimans in another part of Agege, the influx of sympathisers – men,
women and even children – was almost endless on Friday. Even dogs and goats around the area
seem to understand the calamity that had just befallen the family – they
all took strategic positions in the road leading to the compound,
glancing at each visitor with a mournful look. At the veranda of the
compound converged several young and middle-aged men on mats. They were
discussing the latest event and brainstorming on the way forward. Among
them was Usman, the immediate younger sibling of the late Abubakar. He
gave a chilling insight into what manner of pain the family was passing
through and how the tragic incident had crushed dreams and left a host
of challenges on their doorpost. The situation, he says, leaves them
deeply confused.
“I was out of the house for most part of the day and didn’t return home until night that Wednesday,”
he began.
“While I was in bathroom, calls kept coming on my phones; I thought they were business calls which I could pick later because I was very tired at that point. But after praying, I decided to check my phone and later called one of my relatives who immediately asked if I had heard what happened. The person said my brother was involved in an accident. By the time we rushed down to Ojuelegba, another person called us that we shouldn’t go to the Surulere police station where the matter was being handled but that we should go to the Mainland Hospital in Yaba. On getting there, they took us straight to their mortuary, that was when we actually knew that they were dead,” he said.
Dumbfounded at that point, Usman needed
to dig deep within his arsenal for the strength and courage to relay the
news to their aged and hypertensive mother – Hajia Fatima. It was one
year after the family suffered a similar loss. The last child of the
home, Mukthar, had died in a terrible road accident last year in Katsina
State immediately after securing a job with a telecommunications firm.
It was barely two weeks to his wedding. It was a big blow to the entire
household. The wound had yet to fully heal before tragedy knocked on the
family’s door again – this time taking Abubakar, their eldest child.
“There was no way I could relay such
message to our mother,” Usman explains, emotions almost betraying him.
“We had to keep the news away from his wife and our mother because the
two of them are hypertensive; such news would break them down. The news
was broken to them the next morning. We had to call our elderly Hausa
women to break the news to them and stay with them. Our mother cried
uncontrollably at the news because Mukthar’s death, our last born, is
still fresh in our minds.
“The three of them in the vehicle at the time of the accident, were heading back home from Apapa where they had gone to transact a business. One of them, Kamilu, used to live here at the family house before getting an apartment of his own recently. He had four children while Umar, the third person in the car with them, has eight children. We are all related,” he said.
Sadly, Kamilu’s newly born child was
christened on Friday – two days after death claimed his life in the most
tragic manner, ending his dreams and throwing his family into a season
of endless mourning. His wife and children have since been moved to
their native Kano following their burial at the Agege cemetery on
Thursday evening. They would continue their journey without their
38-year-old father and breadwinner.
Curiously several days after the tragic
incident that shook the entire nation, there has been no word from the
police, owners of the ill-fated truck or the Lagos State Government on
whether there would be compensation for children and wives of the
victims. Usman says the situation leaves them confused by the day.
“Though, the Governor of Lagos State, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode, sent some representatives to our house on Thursday, we haven’t heard anything from any quarters since then. The victims have families and young children. How will they survive without their fathers and breadwinners? We are talking about 17 children without fathers, how will they cope in the years to come? The problem is too much for the family alone to handle.
“The police also haven’t said much. Though, we saw the tanker driver at the station but we don’t even know if there is a company involved, nobody has told us anything yet. Before we even got the corpses of our brothers was tough. In fact it was a big battle at the Mainland Hospital mortuary where staff were asking us to pay N250, 000 before the bodies would be released to us despite instructions from the Governor that they should be released. It took hours of protest from us before the bodies were eventually released,” he said.
The casualty from the latest container
tragedy could have been worse had the heavy metal also pinned a white
car inches away from Abubakar’s SUV. By a whisker, the vehicle and its
occupant – Lasisi Akeem – were not touched, reminding us of how much
could have gone down under the massive weight of the 40ft ‘monster’.
Painful as the Ojuelegba incident is, it
is not the first time containers carried by trucks would crush lives
and end dreams – the latest is among an ever swelling list of deaths
that continue to occur across the country on daily basis.
Calls for the outlawing of articulated
vehicles carrying containers within Lagos and other major cities across
the country during the day, have often ended with every major tragedy.
Authorities continue to look away while trucks and their heavy baggage
continue to spill blood and kill dreams.
Source: Punch
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