Sanwo-Olu says insurance didn’t cover buses burnt during #EndSARS

Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, discloses that state government cannot file for insurance claims on the mass transit buses destroyed by fire during the #EndSARS protests in 2020.

Sanwo-Olu, however, declared that the vehicles would be replaced by the government.

As indicated by him, the premium paid on the vehicles did not insure what ultimately occurred to them.

Numerous government properties, particularly buses were set ablaze during the protests.

The governor disclosed this in an interview on Channels Television which was aired on Sunday and monitored by Top Naija.

He said, “In fact, we have started the conversation. The interesting thing is that we are working with a local bus manufacturing company and it is going to come with almost the same specification as the ones that were unfortunately destroyed.

“They were insured, but insurance will never cover you 100 per cent. These are beyond insurance; they are like natural disaster or events like arson or riots, which are not covered. These are like unforeseen, unexpected incidents.”

Sanwo-Olu added that the inter-city rail network being built by the Federal Government motivated the intra-city project in Lagos.

He stated, “For us, it is to seize the opportunity, build the rail infrastructure, go line-in-line with the NRC in some places; we need to build our terminals and sidelines; we need to have a joint communication strategy with them and we need to build overpasses, such that we can have intra-city network from Oyingbo to Ebute Meta to Yaba to Jibowu to Mushin to Ikeja to Agege to Ijaiye and finally to Agbado.

“So, while the Federal Government is taking people out of Lagos to other parts of the country, we are keeping our own traffic that is internal to Lagos.”

The governor stated that the government had also purchased 20 boats with 50-passenger, 40-passenger and 30-traveller limits.

He said, “We are connecting the entire Lagos also with waterways.”

Sanwo-Olu also clarified that the government did not plan to render Yellow Buses operators, commonly known as ‘Molue’ and ‘Danfo’ useless, stating that they would collaborate with the government in managing the new metro projects.

He added, “We need to collaborate; we need to engage. These are important stakeholders. They have served our citizens; they have served Lagosians for so long in time. The yellow buses have become the paint of Lagos. Let us see how we can remodel them.”