The Anthony Joshua’s Road Accident
By: Deji Yesufu
Yesterday, 30th December 2025, Anthony Joshua, a two-time heavyweight champion of the world, was involved in a ghastly motor accident on the Lagos-Ibadan expressway. Reports emerging from the accident are still sketchy, but apparently, he was travelling in a Lexus SUV when the car collided with a stationary truck in the Makun area of Ogun State around 8am. Some people are blaming the incident on overspeeding. Others think that while overtaking a vehicle, a tyre on the car burst and this was what led to the driver losing control of the car and colliding with the stationary vehicle. Joshua was with his personal trainer and coach, whose names are given as Latz and Sina – both of whom may have lost their lives in the accident. Social media has been flooded with videos of Joshua being pulled out of the wreck; he is clearly in pain, and he is being transferred to another vehicle to be taken to the hospital. The incident is made worse with the usual Nigerian factor of onlookers spending more time and effort capturing the accident on video than helping the wounded. Many times, the poor judgment that people exercise when accidents happen is the cause of many deaths. Accidents are emergencies, and what you do in a space of two to five minutes after the incident happens might determine whether someone lives or dies.
Two weeks ago, I was a guest of Abimbola Adelakun, a columnist with Punch newspapers. She was celebrating twenty-five years since the death of her mother, Mojisola Ajoke Adelakun. The woman was returning to Ibadan from Oyo town, where she worked, when she had this ghastly motor accident and died. She was 40 years old. My own mother, Dr. Henritetta Temilola Yesufu, also had a ghastly motor accident on the Oyo-Ibadan Road in 1981. Everyone in that vehicle perished. My mother was saved because an ambulance was passing by just at about that time, and she was resuscitated and taken to UCH. She was saved mainly by the grace of God and by the country’s working health system at the time. I took the Lagos-Ibadan expressway just last week, and the experience I had, particularly with my children with me in the car, led me to make the decision of returning from Lagos by train. Nigerian roads are not just bad; the drivers are reckless. But I would be returning to that theme in a moment. My children and I were waiting for the train to arrive when I saw the message that Joshua had been involved in the accident on that same road I was trying to avoid travelling on. The effort we had put into taking the train, notwithstanding the time wasted doing it, was probably worth it after all. Now, I am beginning to read commentaries from government apologists. Some are telling us that accidents happen in foreign countries also. Somebody has suggested that Diego Jota was travelling in Europe when he lost his life in a similar ghastly motor accident. All in a bid to tell us not to castigate the Nigerian system: “…our country is sha trying…” – to use the modern colloquialism our young people use (I have told my children that they should never use “sha” when they are speaking to me. It is a bastardization of the English language). Back to the matter.
First, a response to government apologists. While I understand that there are a few people who earn their living from castigating the government, a few of us do not. In fact, we put our means of livelihood in peril when we speak these truths to power. Nigeria is not a one-party state; we are not running a military government where all kinds of criticism of the government is censored. This country is a democracy, and it behooves men of sound thinking to speak truth when the social fabric of the country is threatened. Once upon a time, this country had opposition. The government has silenced all kinds of opposition. They appear to have bought everybody up, and everyone is singing the praises of the government. There is no society that thrives that way. A working democracy will always have two arms: the people in government – they are the winners who are enjoying their time in office, along with the resources they earn while doing this. There are also those who lost in the last election, who must compose themselves as an opposing force, and who never tire at criticizing the government. They put the people in office on their toes, shedding light on systemic failures and calling attention to their fixing. The result is that eventually, society benefits from these two systems. A second point I must quickly make is that the Nigerian government must be commended on some infrastructures they have put in place in the past few years. The Lagos-Ibadan expressway, having now been completed, has made travelling easy for Nigerians, and obviously, many people are coming into the country to enjoy these dividends of democracy. But these should not obfuscate the need for certain important things to be put in place as far as road safety is concerned.
The first thing that comes to mind is the state of mind of Nigerian drivers. When I take public transport, I observe the average Nigerian driver. I discovered that they usually use the seat belt only when they see “Road Safety”. The moment “Road Safety” is out of sight, they remove the seat belt. I have come to realize that many drivers in Nigeria, including those we will call elite among them, either have no education or are poorly educated. Now, the things that the Nigerian Road Safety Corp make demands of drivers are just simple, basic, commonsensical things. A driver of a vehicle is holding the safety of everyone in that vehicle in his hands. A driver must be an individual who is temperate and of sound judgement. He must be patient and considerate. An angry and impulsive person will bring the same tendencies to their driving, and in some cases could end up causing accidents on the road. My study of our past leaders, particularly those in Yoruba land (Obafemi Awolowo and Bola Ige readily come to mind), showed me that those men were particular in choosing their drivers and their cooks. These two people are not ordinary domestic staff. They hold your life in their hands. In the heat of the 1962 crisis in the Western Region, Awolowo’s cooks were paid to poison him. The cooks reported the matter to him themselves. Awo had sent all the children of his domestic staff to the same schools he sent his own children to. They had no choice but to return the favour. The result was that these men kept their cooks and drivers for life. Unfortunately, many Nigerian drivers are not just poorly educated; they are also abrasive, rash, argumentative, insulting, and uncouth. This shows in their driving, and it is a miracle of God’s mercies that we do not have more accidents on our roads. Something must be done to the minds of the average Nigerian driver. The Nigerian Road Safety Corps must work on this. I have written on the Nigerian Road Safety before, how I met a splendid young man there who was doing his job. Well, I hate to report to you that that young man has japa. So, besides the fact that the country is suffering from a lack of drivers, our best minds, in many fields, just keep leaving the country.
The second defect that Anthony Joshua’s accident revealed is the poor state of the health system in Nigeria. As I write this, the Joint Health Sector Union (JOHESU) have entered their second month of strike. This body consists of all health workers in the hospitals in Nigeria, besides doctors and nurses. They have complained for years that the Nigerian government has not given them their due. JOHESU went on strike following the strike action that Resident Doctors had called. Frequent strike actions in Nigerian public hospitals have led to an increase in private medical institutions all around the country. But because the owners of these institutions must make a profit, they do not employ the best hands to manage patients, and these hospitals cannot be used by the poor. In the final analysis, if health care is to be effective and accessible to Nigerians, it must be run by the government. So, Joshua’s accident revealed our poor emergency system and our lack of medical professionals.
Nigeria happened to Joshua yesterday, and he is very lucky that he did not lose his life in the process. It will take a while for him to recover from the loss of his friends and fitness coaches – he might never even recover from it. Anthony Joshua is officially a British boxer, but in recent times, he has been identifying more and more with his Nigerian roots. You see him spending time training in Nigerian gyms and even jogging on the streets of Lagos. The young man loves this country, and it is obvious that he would be investing a lot of the fortune that he has made from boxing in Nigeria. This is not the way to pay him back.
Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. He can be reached at [email protected]
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