Seven students from Kano lost their lives on Tuesday morning, along Ibadan –Lagos express way in a road accident believed to have been caused by a burst tyre, and the Kano State Governor, Dr. Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, has described their deaths as shocking.
“On getting information about the accident, I immediately called the governor of Oyo state who got personally involved and even visited the hospital to see the injured. We have also arranged for the injured and the deceased to be transported to Kano this evening by air”, Mr. Ganduje said, according to a government spokesman.
The students, Ahmed Faisal, Kamal Muhammad and Abubakar Abdullahi, are from Kano Capital School while Umar Musa, Sani Musa, Ibrahim Sani and Yusuf Danladi came from Unity College, Karaye, in the state.
Others who lost their lives in the accident are Aminu Abdullahi, the driver of their ill-fated bus and Mr. Okafor, a staff of FrieslandCampina WAMCO Nigeria Plc. Three other students however, sustained various degrees of injury.
The contingent was returning in a bus, belonging to a public secondary school in Kano, from a National schools quiz competition organised by FrieslandCampina WAMCO Nigeria Plc, the producers of Peak Milk, in Lagos.
Briefing parents of the victims at the Government House, Kano,mon Wednesday, Mr. Ganduje described the incident as shocking, saying it has affected the entire state.
He described the late students as heroes who were on a mission to do the state proud and urged their parents to take solace in the fat that all mortals will inevitably die.
He prayed Almighty Allah to grant the deceased eternal rest and to stand by the bereaved as they mourn the loss of their beloved children who died in their formative years.
To the Special Adviser to the Governor on Special Duties and immediate past chairman of the state Council of Ulama, Shiekh Ibrahim Khalil, who quoted copiously from the Holy Qur’an and hadith to comfort the parents and relatives of the deceased, the dead are martyrs.
The governor led a delegation of politicians, top civil servants, parents and other family members to receive corpses of the victims who were brought to the state capital on board AZMAN Air, at Malam Aminu Kano International Airport, to hasten their burial according to Islamic rites.
They will be buried today at the Tarauni graveyard after the funeral prayer at the Emir of Kano’s palace by 9am.