She was only 28years old. She was also an only child born after 20 years of waiting for the fruit of the womb. She lost her mother during childbirth, and barely knew her biological father, who like some men couldn’t stand the torture of waiting hopelessly for years to be called a father; he abandoned her mother after years of waiting.
Kike, Obiora (not real name) through dint of struggles, hard work, and persistence, self-sponsored herself through school, graduating from one of the high-flying Universities in the country. While at the University, she met and fell in love with Hope Churchill (not real name), a Research Assistant, who adored her so much and even promised to walk her down the aisle.
On a fateful day, she left home to visit Hope with the intention of returning the same day. She left without informing her roommate or neighbors for a trip that was barely 5kilometres from her neighborhood. The journey was in the company of her newfound friends and confidants.
Just about a kilometer away from home, the vehicle she boarded crashed due to brake failure. All the occupants, including Kike sustained various degrees of injuries. However, Kike’s was more complicated as she also sustained a spinal cord injury which kept her bedridden for months only for her to pass on a few days before her 29th birthday.
Last week, I painted the picture of the faces behind crashes not just in 2025, but crashes that have occurred so far in 2026. Space did not allow me to capture the death of Super Eagles’ captain Wilfred Ndidi. Did you read the sad news? About Super Eagles captain Wilfred Ndidi whose father, Sunday Ndidi died following a road traffic crash.
The crash, according to reports, occurred in Umunede, Delta State. The retired military officer who survived the intricacies of wars and battles, lost his life in a crash. Although he was taken to a hospital, he couldn’t make it. The details of the crash were not given; the probable causative factors are not known as I write.
I do not know if I missed the Federal Road Safety Corps annual media briefing on the crash trend and projected strategic interventions to redress the trend. I am sure that these crashes would form part of the statistics that would be revealed to alert and guide the motoring public.
I do not know the current trend of road traffic crashes involving children, as well as pedestrians and other vulnerable road users. But I know that just as I did when Anthony Joshua crashed and lost his two buddies, prayers have been poured out, consoling and comforting our reliable Ndidi as well as the children who died in those crashes.
No matter the number of crashes involving children last year and even this current year, I need to remind you of the World Health Organization’s scary global picture of deaths and injuries involving children. While I doff my hat for the Corps in tackling this trend, I still worry over parental and guidance negligence in promoting safe driving behavior.
Just last Sunday, I spotted a parent who was driving with his six-year-old child comfortably lapped by him while driving. These scenes have become commonplace in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory as well as major cities in the country involving our so-called elites and educated road users.
For the records, let me remind parents that one of the effective means of safeguarding a child in a vehicle is the use of seatbelt or child restraints by all occupants in the front and rear seats as contained in the National Road Traffic Regulations, section 58(3) and (4) of the They don’t prevent crashes but are critical in reducing the severity of injuries in the event of a crash.
Let me again inform you that I worry over the figures, but I am not interested in the figures. I know that the Corps will be lampooned even when we seem to be on top of our assignment despite the inherent challenges. My reasons are legion. Such an argument will not bring Ndidi’s father back to life. Neither bring Joshua’s buddies who have since been buried.
It won’t heal the bereaved, nor would it bring food to their tables. I plead for us to reflect on these few figures of humans not animals; cut short by irresponsible driving not bad roads, not terrorists, not bandits nor kidnappers. These were preventable road traffic crashes ranging from Anthony’s, to others.
When the December 29th crash occurred, the media was awash with commentators, analysts, content creators, critics, yet our driving behavior; our recklessness, our overtaking on the right instead of the left, our one-way driving among both the lettered and unlettered has not abated.
That for me is the real challenge. Some roads may be bad. Some operatives may falter. Some vehicles may not meet minimum safety standards. Some of the road signs and signals as well as road markings may be defaced or even washed off. Some may not have any sign to guide responsible driving. All of these are no excuses for the suicidal driving mannerisms we see daily on highways, and even in built-up areas.
If you do a post-mortem on all these crashes, you won’t read of spirits being responsible. You will read of excessive speeding, reckless overtaking, tyre bursts due to speed or due to substandard tyre usage, driving against traffic, and driving under the influence of all sorts of substances.
For the record again, the Corps has warned of the dangers of excessive speeding. It is instructive to note that the maximum speed remains 100km/h for private cars on the highways while common sense says it is recommended on bad roads, poorly maintained vehicles, and or bad weather. So, when we blame bad roads and not bad driving, one begins to wonder why we indulge in buck-passing.
Records available to the Corps indicate that Abuja has one of the highest fatality figures; yet Abuja boasts of one of the best road networks, best on infrastructure, and best on traffic engineering. Disappointingly, we are deficient in responsible driving, honesty, integrity, social responsibility, and trust which are values that hold society together even without enforcement. Civic ethics which leads to strong collective accountability is a strange bedfellow in our driving encyclopedia despite our religious flavor. So, as we navigate 2026, please rethink your driving and be safe.
