By Rasheedat Abidiesin
The frontal gate of Michael Adeniyi Koleosho Polytechnic. Credit: Rasheedat Abidiesin
8 July 2025 was the day Samuel Ogunleye never returned home.
Around 9 a.m., on Tuesday morning, Ogunleye Samuel, a respected pastor, doubled as an administrative officer of the Nigeria Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE), was struck by an overspeeding car on his way to a workplace along the Ago-Are road in Saki, a community in Oyo State, South Western Nigeria.
It was just about ten minutes when Samuel left home. Then minutes later, it was a tragedy for his whole household — he was knocked down by a car driven by a student of Michael Adeniyi Koleosho Polytechnic, a private tertiary institution sitting at the heart of the community. Despite all efforts, Samuel could not survive the accident. He died instantly.
The recurrence of incidents associated with Samuel's death tells a startling story in Nigeria. During a public briefing, Shehu Muhammad, a Corps Marshall to the Federal Road Safety Commission, said, “Despite efforts to reduce accidents, Nigeria still record an average of 5,000 deaths and over 31,000 injuries annually from road accidents.” The disclosure was made at the Corps’ 8th annual public lecture at the Banquet Hall, Presidential Villa, Abuja.
According to the World Health Organization, car accidents claim more than 1.9 million lives nationwide. Approximately 1.19 million lives are cut short, directly resulting from road traffic crashes. Between 20 and 50 million, more people suffer non-fatal injuries, with many incurring disabilities.
The consequences of road traffic accidents are not restricted to bodily injuries or loss of lives, WHO data further revealed. Whenever such accidents occur, it incurred considerable economic losses to individuals, their families, and to nations as a whole. These losses arise from the cost of treatment as well as lost productivity for those killed or disabled by the injuries sustained from crash, and for family members who need to take time off work or in school to care for the injured person. In addition, road traffic crashes cost most countries 3% of their gross domestic product.
The reality of the above data is direct. At the fresh moment of the loss, Samuel's family hopes for a miracle. It took months before the household retired to fate. Samuel never returned home.
During an interview with this reporter, Adebola Rasheed, a brother to Samuel, recounted the horror with teary eyes. By the time he arrived at the scene of the accident, the remains of his brother was everything left for him.
“When I got to the spot where the accident occurred, I immediately sighted his bike already in the van of the police and I saw a car crashed in the bush too,” Rasheed revisited a moment he was trembling with a sobering heart.
“I asked those policemen about the whereabouts of the owner of the machine, which they directed me to where he was rushed to. I asked how vital the accident was and they said he had already died.”
Frontal gate of Michael Adeniyi Koleosho Polytechnic. Credit: Rasheedat Abidiesin
The two students supposedly claimed to be out of time for a scheduled exam that fateful day, the reason they were in so much hurry to summon the careless driving. It was confirmed that the speed with which the students activated from Oyo Town left them at the mercy of losing control at a U-turn point before crushing Samuel on his way.
Same Pattern, Similar Tragedy
Barely a few months after Samuel's tragedy, another set of students from the same school threw the community into a similar grief. This time, Alhaji Waheed Olohunoyin, an Islamic cleric, was brutally crushed to death.
“On that particular day, he went out and was coming back home when the students knocked him from behind,” Wikoyat Omobolanle, a daughter of the deceased, broke silence after a long pause. She bitterly bemoaned the students’ unchecked criminal activities, adding “we saw their school identity card which we traced and apprehend the driver.”
Omobolanle explained that the student escaped punishment because he was identified as an underage by the police. “That’s when we gave up the case, which to us seems like the police were bribed.”
It only took the intervention of first responders who rushed him to the hospital while he was still breathing, Omobolanle explained. She noted however that the injuries all over his body could not be managed. His head was bleeding so bad that even if he survived the accident, he can’t be the same ever again.
According to the victim’s survivors, the students were marking their graduation celebration that fateful day. They were on drugs, drunk, thereby driving recklessly under the influence of hard substances.
To their greatest shock, the students fled the scene immediately, leaving the victims lying unconsciously by the road. It only took the intervention of good Samaritans who fought for his life.
Just like Samuel, Alhaji Olohunoyin left behind wives, children, siblings, and other relatives whose survival rested on his. They all say, “navigating life without the deceased is hell.”
Luxurious cars belonging to the students of Michael Adeniyi Koleosho Polytechnic. Credit: Rasheedat Abidiesin
Scary Data, Narrow Escape
Over the years, road accidents and automobile crashes are commonplace in Nigeria. The incident claimed nothing less than 5,421 lives in 2024 alone. The data recorded approximately 9,570 crashes within the year, out of which 31,154 individuals sustained injuries.
Similarly, between January and December in 2025, at least 3,400 were killed in such road crashes, with 22,162 others sustaining varying degrees of injuries in 6,858 reported accidents across the nation.
Total crashes across the country increased by 9.2 percent, from 9,570 in 2024 to 10,446 in 2025. Serious crashes increased by 10.5 percent, rising from 6,131 cases in 2024 to 6,772 in 2025. Minor crashes saw an even sharper increment of 17.5 percent, surging from 907 to 1,066 within the same period.
From 2016, statistics showed that 28,250 victims, covering 93.83 percent of the victims injured were adults while the remaining 1,855 of 6.16 percent were children. Male accounted for 22,705, which is 75.42 percent of the total victims, while female accounted for the remaining 5,545 of 24.58 percent. In addition, 4,696 (92.93 percent) of those killed in the year were adults, while the remaining 357 (7.07 percent) were children.
iInfographics highlighting the road crash burden in Nigeria. Credit: Rasheedat Abidiesin
Baliqis Omotoyosi, another resident of the community, also shared her own paranoia. She described the memory as the greatest shock of “my life” because “I nearly got killed.”
“The gap between us and death was just a matter of seconds. We are just lucky. If not, we would have been crushed dead by now.”
Omotoyosi never felt threatened by the school’s presence in the community until those students started to claim innocent lives. Echoing the same allegations levelled against the students by Omobolanle, she said: “They drink, get involved in drugs, speed recklessly, and engage in all sorts of atrocities.”
Traffic Law, Toothless Dog
To regulate effective usage of roads and protect the interest of road users across Nigeria, the federal government stepped in through national enactments.
The Nigerian Federal Highway Act (2004) penalised any act of reckless driving of a motor vehicle leading to the death of another person. Whether recklessly or at a speed in a manner positioned to endanger the public safety, Section 5 of the Act provided that irresponsible driving occasioning death at federal highway attracted an imprisonment of seven years upon proving the guilt and securing the conviction of the perpetrator in the court of law.
The enactment further mandated every driver of motor vehicles on a federal highway to possess a valid driving license. Section 10 prohibited operation of a vehicle without the proscribed license, failure of which rendered the culprit liable to a criminal offence.
Also, a person must have attained the age of maturity, at least 18 years of age, before driving in any part of Nigeria. Therefore, underage driving is strictly a gross contravention of legal frameworks. Section 8 of the Federal Highway Act (2004) criminalised any action by an unlicensed person below the age of 18 years to drive a vehicle or ride a motorcycle on public highways. Similarly, under the Federal Road Safety Commission (Establishment) Act, minors are legally prohibited from driving because they lack the required age of maturity. Such an offence is penalised by a fine.
Similar procedures have been domesticated in every state, recognising peculiarities of each locality. In Oyo State, Section 3, Subsection 1 of the Oyo State Road Traffic Law (2000) stipulated that any person who causes the death of another person by driving a motor vehicle on a highway recklessly, or in a manner which is dangerous to the public, shall be liable upon summary trial and conviction under the law to imprisonment of seven years or to fine or to both imprisonment and fine.
Section 7 of the Oyo State Traffic Law further prohibited any individual from driving a motor vehicle on a highway without holding a valid driver's licence. Section 7, Subsection 5 explicitly stated that an applicant for a driving license or person operating a motor vehicle must not be under 18 years of age.
Despite the above legal frameworks that regulate reckless and other driving activities, and protect the safety of road users, including pedestrians, the Saki community continue to live under the torment of a single dilemma: nobody knows who is the next victim. Just like the cleric’s case disclosed, the student involved was an underage, driving without a license. This reflected a broader failure of regulatory oversight that continued to drive severe consequences across the country.
The global status report on road safety in 2023 detailed the scale of global road traffic deaths. It also documented progress in advancing laws, strategies, and actions to reduce those casualties around the world. The report provided an overview of progress between 2010 and 2021, setting a baseline for the United Nations Decade of Action for Road Safety 2021-2030 target of halving road traffic deaths and injuries by 2030.
The report further revealed that the number of deaths resulted from road traffic has fallen slightly to 1.19 million per year. Therefore, the efforts to improve road safety are yielding results. Yet, the price paid for mobility remained far too high, pressing for urgent action if the goal of halving road traffic deaths and injuries by 2030 is to be achieved.
Luxurious cars belonging to the students of Michael Adeniyi Koleosho Polytechnic. Credit: Rasheedat Abidiesin
Precious Friday, a Saki-based lawyer confirmed that under the Compendium of Oyo State, the Oyo State Traffic Laws 2000 prohibited reckless driving with a punishment of six months imprisonment and fine.
He further pointed to infrastructural deficit, intimidating sanctions, among others as mixed factors the Nigerian traffic law seemed ineffective. “In Nigeria, we suffer from being an underdeveloped country. In the outside countries like the United States, London, the Road Corps operate something called ‘Wardar’.
“If a particular person drives above the speed limits, they immediately have the signal and will hold you responsible immediately.”
The legal practitioner further shared insights on how perpetrators go unpunished. He shifted responsibilities to every party involved, including perpetrators, victims, and law enforcement officers.
“When a crime like this arises and there’s an arrest, the police take the statement and there will be an investigation before taking the matter to court,” he said. “They ought to be charged to magistrate court because that is the court that has the jurisdiction to entertain such matters, but they have always been charged to customary court. At the court, a wise lawyer would raise the issue of jurisdiction, the case will be struck out and that’s the end.”
Based on his experience, the police also don’t carry out in-depth investigations well enough to secure guilt, conviction, and punishment.
“Saki is a small town and with what I have seen so far, if an accident occurs and it has been charged to court, the next thing the family do is have a dialogue and withdraw the case from the court,” he further stated.
Efforts Put in Place to Address the Issue
According to Abbas Hamza, a National Diploma holder from the polytechnic, confirmed similar experiences inside the school campus. He admitted that those reckless drivers sometimes hurt their fellow students. “They are not only killing residents outside the school alone,” Hamza affirmed. They are killing us too.”
Hamza further shared a measure put in place by the school management to put the students in check. Some years back, the school authorities, through a memo, prohibited students from mobilising transportation inside the school. Students are only allowed to park their cars or motorcycles outside the school gate.
Although this reporter could not lay hands on the memo in question, Sideeq Oladipupo, another student from the same community who is pursuing his Higher Diploma attested to Abbas' revelation. “They drive roughly inside the school campus and the management had to stop them from bringing cars and bikes to reduce accidents that are happening frequently inside the campus.”
This reporter sighted cars and motorcycles, lining up in numbers, heavily occupying the school frontal space during a visit to the school in December 2025. It was confirmed to this reporter that those vehicles and bikes belong to students.
Student bikes in front of Michael Adeniyi Koleosho Polytechnic after management’s regulations. Credit: Rasheedat Abidiesin
During an interview, Mr Adegboyega Yekeen, a spokesman to the community, shared what the residents are doing to address the issue. He said, “The institution has what we call town and gown. This is a platform for mediation between the town and the institution.”
“A series of meetings have been held with the management and the community. This is in furtherance to assuage and keep the situation in check. Speed breakers have been put in place to caution road users.”
When contacted, Abdulmumeen Jimba, the Assistant Superintendent of Police, Saki Area Command, noted that affected parties have the right to channel their complaints to the police. He further disclosed that cases are often charged to court to serve as deterrence to other road users.
“Area Command office is majorly an administrative office while the Divisional Police Headquarters are directly handling such cases. If a party is aggrieved, he will channel his grievance through Area command.”
All efforts to speak with the school management were proven unsuccessful. Several calls put forward to the management of the Polytechnic went unanswered. This reporter further sent email, including reminders . However, this reporter did not receive any feedback as at the time of filing this report.