Reckless Driver Runs Over Journalist, Wife In Calabar

Peter Okon, a senior journalist with Cross River Broadcasting Corporation, CRBC, has been hit by a driver.

His two legs were crushed by the car whose driver lost control because he was allegedly busy with his phone and a female companion beside him.

The unfortunate incident happened in the early morning of last Saturday near the popular Calabar-Calabar roundabout on the Murtala Mohammed highway as Okon, a news director at CRBC, and his wife were jogging back home.

Okon, on admission at the University of Calabar Teaching Hospital male orthopaedic ward after a major operation, explained: “As my wife and I were about to jog back to our home in the nearby Federal Housing Estate Calabar after the usual weekly exercise, here comes a car veering off the roundabout towards us with speed.

“Sensing danger, I was able to push off my wife who then fell into the gutter with degrees of injuries.

“It was now too late for me to jump away and help myself. As a result, the reckless driver who was steering the wheel with one hand answering a call whilst a woman held his hand, hit me, crushing my two legs.

“My wife told me that the only person that came to her head was the chairman of NUJ in Cross River State, Comrade Gill Nsa-Abasi whom she called to evacuate me to UCTH.”

He explained that he has already expended much on the major surgery, drugs, tests, medical consumables, bed space etc.

He hinted that there would be plastic surgery on one of the legs that was badly affected.

It is understood that the young man who drove the car did not flee and the owner of the car did not authorise him to drive it that morning.

The Nigeria Union of Journalists, NUJ, chairman has appealed to colleagues and other public spirited persons to rally around Okon and his family at this painful time.

The spokesman of the Federal Road Safety Corps in the state, Ikpi Esu, could not be reached for comment.