In what was supposed to have been a joyous end to a successful academic completion and graduation, it was a mixture of shock and grief for the families of six final year nursing students of the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH), Ogbomosho, Oyo State, who lost their lives in a fatal motor accident recently along the Ilorin-Ogbomosho highway in Kwara State.
The victims, who boarded a vehicle from a garage in Suleja town of Niger State last Sunday, headed to the university for their final year examination in the institution’s Open and Distance learning programme. What was supposed to be the final lap of their undergraduate dreams; however, turned out to be a sad and heartbreaking turn of events.
Weekend Trust gathered that the students had combined their professional careers as working nurses with academic commitments and were eager to complete their programme to formally qualify for a Bachelor of Nursing degree. The deceased, Maimunah Abdurraheem, Jamila Idris, Nana Firdausi Shehu, Blessing Kevwe, Owoicho Elezabeth and Aroke Ozavize Victoria, all died in an accident.
Weekend Trust traced the family house of one of the deceased, Maimunah Abdurraheem located at the Kwamba area in Suleja town, not far from where the students embarked on the journey on that fateful day. Amid a sombre mood at the family house, which continues to receive mourners, the father to the late Maimunah, 26, Mr Abdurrahim Hamza, and her mother, Halimat Jumah, revealed that Maimunah died with an unborn child, which was her first pregnancy in her young family. Her mother noted that her daughter attended her online programme from home while still working at a private clinic in Suleja town.
“This was their final year, and the journey was meant for their second semester examination in their 500-level.
“They attended lectures online, and during exams, they would go to the school to write the exams in person for the period of two weeks. I communicated with her about twice that day after she left. At past 4pm, I tried to reach her but was unsuccessful, so I called one of her course mates, Nana, who travelled with her.
“The call connected and rang, but it was unanswered. At that moment, I controlled my emotions and left for the Ramadan tarawih prayers at the mosque. Her husband was also calling me over the phone to know whether I heard from her. My husband and I became confused when we continued calling their contacts later in the night without success.
“We later decided to visit the home of the driver whose car they boarded at about 10pm, who happened to live in our neighbourhood as well. That was where we learnt that the driver had had an accident along the road and lost his life. We were directed from the house of the driver to go to Kwamba motor park, where the information came from. It was there that we got the news about their deaths.
“I thank the Almighty Allah who gave me Maimunah and also took her no,” she concluded.
She further said their next effort was to connect with the families of the other deceased female students to arrange a journey to locate and identify their corpses. She said she was able to get one of the parents’ contacts through one of their course mates from the school.
“We learnt that the course mate, along with others from the school, visited Ilorin, and later, around 3am, they located their corpses at the university teaching hospital in Ilorin. By the second day, the family of Jamila, Nana and mine left together to Ilorin, where we met a delegation from their school who were set to leave with the corpses to their school’s teaching hospital in Ogbomosho.
“They sought our opinion about that and we told them that we would want to bury the three of them in Ilorin. That was how the remains of Maimuna and Jamila were buried in Ilorin, while that of Nana was taken to Idah in Kogi State, where her family wanted it to be,” she narrated.
Madam Halimat Jumah described her late daughter, Maimunah as a religious and obedient daughter who didn’t want to see anyone worried or in pain.
She recalled some weird feelings she had the morning prior to her daughter embarking on the journey, saying, “I recall during Sahur (pre-dawn meal) that morning with her that I had an unusual feeling, which I kept trying to control, but she noticed. With her condition as a pregnant woman, she was curious to know what was wrong and kept asking what was wrong with me. She noted that this wasn’t my normal self. But I responded to her that nothing was wrong with me,” she also said.
The medical director of the hospital she worked in before her death, Dr Bello Auwal, who had paid the family a condolence visit, while speaking to Weekend Trust, was full of praises for the late Maimunah, describing her as a dedicated and hard-working person that was never late at work for a day.
Weekend Trust learnt that the family of one of the deceased, Jamila, was still in Kogi State, where she was buried, while the family of Nana Firdausi lives in Dutsen-Alhaji in the Bwari Area Council in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). The family of Victoria, another victim, was said to live in Kwankwashe, a community at the outskirts of Suleja town, but had left for their home state of Kogi.
There was no available information about the location of the families of the other two victims of the accident.
Ibrahim Yakubu, an engineer and uncle to the late Jamila Idris, one of the six students who lost their lives in the accident, narrated that on that day, she left her family home at Dutsen-Alhaji in the morning to join five of her course mates to embark on what now turned to be their final journey.
Yakubu said he received the shocking news about her death in the early hours of Monday. “Although the information started coming on Sunday night, it was not very clear until Monday morning. I was on my way to work when I received a call from one of my sisters about the accident. I had to rush there, where I learnt that somebody had already left for Ilorin to locate the remains of Jamila. I later learnt that the students boarded two buses and she happened to be a passenger of one that had an accident. He described the late Jamila as a gentle and trustworthy person.
He said the deceased had communicated with her mother while on the journey before they later lost communication on arriving Bida town in Niger State. He said late Jamila, 28, attended primary school at Dutsen-Alhaji and Government Day Secondary School in the same community.
She later moved to Abaji, where she completed her senior secondary school before getting admission into the School of Nursing, Gwagwalada, also in the FCT. She applied for a degree in nursing at a university in Bauchi, from where she was directed to LAUTECH to sit for her final year examination, her uncle narrated.
