Residents of Iwaro/Oka Akoko in Akoko Southwest local government area of Ondo State on Saturday trooped out in their numbers to protest what they called incessant killings by heavy duty vehicles.

The protesters carried placards with various inscriptions like ‘Don’t turn our community into ghost town’, ‘Our lives matter, no solution, no peace’, ‘we are tired of accident on Akungba/Oka Road.’

Others are ‘ODSG construct alternative road on Akungba Oka Road’, ‘Incessant Accidents make us homeless.’

The protesters barricaded Iwaro Oka road preventing vehicular movement.

They said they had lost thousands of lives and properties worth millions of naira to the incessant accidents.

The chairman of Iwaro Oka Community Union, Otunba Dele Ologbese, said the union decided to organise the protest due to menace caused by heavy duty trucks.

Ologbese said the town had been suffering economically due to farmers neglecting their farmlands because of resulting inferno from incessant tanker accidents.

He urged the state governments to put permanent barricades against heavy duty vehicles and provide alternate routes for them.

The Regent of Asin, Iwaro Oka, Princess Adekemi Omorinbola, said the accident was too much and that the complaints of the people of the town had been falling on deaf ears of the government.

Omorinbola urged government to ensure it moved swiftly to proffer a lasting solution by protecting lives and properties of the people.

He said: “We are here because the accident is too much in this area, we can’t sleep with one eye closed, not to talk of the two eyes. It is affecting our people economically and psychologically. We don’t have light, trailers have destroyed this town for us.”

The chairman of the community, Mr Jerome Orole, said the state government should act quickly on the problem before the youths of the town took laws into their hands.

However, the chairman, Akoko Southwest local government, Dapo Fasesin, when contacted, said the governor had promised to solve the problem facing the community with heavy duty trucks. (The Nation)

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