Several negative incidents have occurred this festive season like the Christmas Day gift from America to a part of Sokoto in Nigeria, the devastating fire at the popular Lagos Island market that ultimately claimed the lives of some people. But yesterday, 29th December, 2025 will forever remain indelible as the day one of Nigeria’s leading human resource to the world, boxing superstar, Anthony Joshua and his team got involved in a car crash along the Lagos-Sagamu-Ibadan Expressway.
Unfortunately two of his closest friends and colleagues Sina and Ghami, died instantly in the crash. While Anthony and the driver of the armoured (bulletproof) Lexus LX 570 SUV survived albeit with injuries.
First, road crashes are one of the world’s deadliest scourges yet people do not particularly properly respect cars and roads, and the minutes immediately after a crash.
An estimated 1.2/3 million people die from road crashes annually all over the world cutting across the wealthy, the poor, the pious, the non-pious, the good and the bad, law enforcement officers and civilians, the strongest and the mightiest and the weakest and the meekest. Another terrible side to road crashes is that among the world’s deadliest killers, road crashes are the only ones that can easily affect complete families, friends, colleagues, religious relatives all at once or indirectly but heavily affected. For instance, there have been many cases whereby entire families, friends, religious relatives, football club members etc get killed or injured in a single car crash, many examples abound.
Yesterday was one of such days, as Anthony and his friends/colleagues were involved in one and two of them died instantly.
It was such a very sad, painful and unexpected ending. Sadly it’s about to open new dimensions to the lives of all affected. For instance, the Christmas season will never be the same again for both the survivors and the dead’s families as the season will constantly remind them of the event. The treatment and recovery for the survivors, no one can accurately predict the ending, costs or implications at this point. How will Anthony bear the loss of the friends who accompanied him to Nigeria for the visit or face their families to break the news or mourn with them? Will it demoralize him and affect his career etc?
What of the families that depended on the dead ones,?
The driver that drove the ill-fated SUV, how will he face the consequences of his actions?
The police team with them, they too are human beings and apparently their escort formation is post principal’s vehicle not leading. So they most probably witnessed the process of the crash and were the first responders. They may also suffer from PTSD.
On the technical side, most people of means do not train their drivers properly on advanced or and defensive driving skills which will help them better understand the vehicle and its capabilities and limits. This is especially so as armoured or bulletproof cars especially SUVs have so much more weight than their ‘regular’ versions. With this, driving them needs much more skills. Moreover, being much heavier means that their terminal speed on impact also becomes much higher and their impacts can have much greater energy so if against smaller, lighter cars these suffer more but if with heavier , bigger cars, they suffer badly too as their ‘proof’ is against bullets, IEDs EMF but not against crashes. Moreover from the impact pictures and videos that SUV hit the parked truck at a very high speed which can answer why it easily sliced through the car from the front seat to the rear seat. And this can also answer for why the driver lost control because the unaffected driver’s tire remained in a straight line insinuating either high speed loss of control or sleeping off behind the wheel. Thereby either trying to recover from the loss of control or swerving back to regain control which came too late before he impacted the parked truck.
For the parked truck, our expressways are littered with similar trucks. Though this particular one from all indications was completely parked off the road on the shoulder but still close enough to the road. Whether they put an emergency or caution triangle is another case altogether. Sadly it seems like most government agencies don’t particularly care much about their driver’s training and safe road usage or the state of these heavy-duty vehicles as they do for smaller vehicles. It also seems like the government also doesn’t particularly care if they use designated parking lots built for them. The trailer park at Ogere in Ogun State and the Bypass in Edo State are consistently notorious cases.
As per the post crash response, there is something good Nigerians do, immediately a crash occurs, everyone irrespective of tribe or religious differences jumps in and helps no matter how crude and unhealthily they do it. So it behooves the government to consistently train freely and as consistently as possible her populace on first-aid and incident sites management because no one knows the next site nor victims. In my book, ‘Fundamentals of Safer Road Usage, the longest chapter is on first-aid and it has come in handy for me on several occasions.
Apparently the Mitsubishi Pajero on site there was carrying his security details who stopped immediately and were then joined by sympathizers to assist the injured and bring out the dead, albeit in a crude and unsafe manner. Yes, many others were rudely and improperly filming the incident especially embarrassingly direct in the faces of the victims. Sometimes the response from the government agencies eg the police and hospitals cause this nonchalance though the government has constantly claimed to have ordered the police and hospitals to change their policies to victims of road crashes especially those assisted by good Samaritans. I know there are scattered official first responders from the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) and Lagos State Ambulance Service (LASAMBUS/LRU), but that jurisdiction is not for the LASAMBUS/LRU. But the sympathizers worked within the best of the knowledge at their disposal at that point. Unfortunately Anthony was not properly immobilized for safe transport to the hospital with the unsafe manner he was brought out of the vehicle and sat in the front seat of the car instead of lying down on something straight. Another issue too is that he is quite a tall person so it might have been a bit difficult with the Pajero and the next option might have been the bed of the patrol pick-up of the FRSC on site.
All in all, I hope this serves as a wakeup call to our authorities across the board, no one knows tomorrow or who’s next.
Let this 2026 be much better for us all.
And may God bless and rest the departed souls and grant their families and friends the fortitude to bear their losses and grant the injured a complete and speedy recovery.
Meanwhile, where is the driver and what is his state?