By  Abdulwahab  Abdulah & Kehinde Olasanmi
LAGOS — A  mechanical engineer with Dangote Sugar Refinery Company,  Mr Jibrin Baba, yesterday said reports on the August 2010 multiple accidents, involving one of its trucks on Lagos-Ibadan Expressway,  as presented by the Vehicle Inspector Officer, VIO, and Federal Road Safety Commission, FRSC,  were confusing.

Testifying before Mr. Tajudeen Elias, a District Coroner investigating the accident at the  Magistrate Court, Ikeja,  Baba said the reports presented by the team of the FRSC and the state VIO did not represent the true position of  the incident on that day.

Baba told the coroner  that the truck, which was driven by one Salisu Lawal was serviced less than a month before it was involved in the accident.

The FRSC report and that of state VIO had claimed that the said vehicle was technically faulty.

Tendering the job card dated July 8, 2010, indicating the service carried out on the vehicle before the court, Baba said trucks in the fleet of the company were imported from America and were made by Freight Liner, carrying Detroit engines.

Baba said the claim that the vehicle involved was a MAC truck was wrong, since their company does not use such brand.
On the VIO report,  marked as Exhibit Q, he said  that the vehicle was in a good working condition before the accident, adding that it had a diesel engine which would normally prevent it from bursting into flames in a accident situation.

Under cross-examination by counsel to Access to Justice, Mr Leonard Dibia, Baba maintained that the Brake Shoe marked as Exhibit F4 was not from the company’s truck, adding, it was unlikely that the vehicle had a break failure because the skid marks on the road was an indication that the brake was still working when the accident occurred.

He said he last saw Lawal, the driver of the ill-fated truck on July 14, 2010, alluding that he may have died in the resulting fire outbreak.