Four Dead, 12 Injured as Commercial Bus Suffers Tyre Burst, Crashes in Abia.
NUNYA, Abia State — A quiet Thursday afternoon along the Enugu-Port Harcourt Expressway turned tragic when a commercial bus lost control and crashed at Nunya, on the Abia State side of the busy highway. By the time the dust settled, four male passengers had lost their lives, and a dozen more were left nursing injuries.
The accident happened around 2:10 p.m., according to Ngozi Ezeoma, the Abia State Sector Commander of the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC). In a somber conversation with the News Agency of Nigeria in Umuahia, she disclosed that the ill-fated vehicle was a white Nissan Caravan bus.
So, what went wrong? Ezeoma said preliminary findings point to a sudden tyre burst. The driver apparently lost control in an instant, sending the bus veering off its path and into disaster.
Seventeen male adults were on board when the crash occurred. Of that number, four died, 12 sustained injuries of varying degrees, and just one man walked away without a scratch — a rare sliver of mercy in an otherwise grim scene.
Rescue teams from the FRSC rushed to the location and transported the injured survivors to the Federal Medical Centre in Umuahia. But even as they fought to save lives, the toll continued to rise. According to the sector commander, doctors on duty confirmed that two passengers were already dead upon arrival at the hospital. Two more died while receiving treatment.
The bodies of the four deceased men have since been deposited in the hospital's morgue.
Ezeoma also confirmed that FRSC operatives quickly cleared the wreckage and other obstructions from the expressway, ensuring that other motorists did not get trapped in long, agonizing queues of traffic.
For now, the road is open again — but for the families of the four men who never made it home, Thursday will remain a day of unanswered questions and unbearable loss.