Danfo bus experience: Fire in the back

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While growing up, one of the things I frequently did as a student was to enter Danfo buses to school and that time, I had to go to and return from Yaba on a daily basis using Danfo buses. I would also take another bus to Ojulelegba before proceeding to my destination.

Danfo buses along the Yaba route always loaded fast along the Murtala Mohammed way and even when they are not full, they still moved anyway more especially during rush hour because workers and students were always eager to meet the 8 a.m. deadline.

I love taking the buses in the morning because then, the weather was cooler as the sun had not yet set unlike in the afternoons. The best place I love seating in a Danfo bus is in the front withe the driver or on the middle or first row if there was enough leg room for me.

On a particular day when I was about to return to Yaba, I had to sit in the back because the other seats had been taken and I didn't want to waste time and energy under the hot sun waiting for buses as they were equally scarce during that period. So, I entered the back seat which was my least preferred sitting area while carrying my leather school bag. There was an army officer sitting in front with the driver and we proceeded to Yaba from the bus stop I entered from.

One thing about Danfo buses is that their engines are normally located at the back and so when it gets hot, it's the passengers at the back that first feel the heat before those in the front and bus drivers at times also make the stupid decision to load fuel in jerry cans above that back engine.

Before we got to Yaba, the bus started to smoke and the drive noticed that it was emitting a lot of smoke and we at the back were gradually getting covered by it. We cried out to the driver and he proceeded to quickly park the bus at a nearby petrol station along our route and everybody rushed out to disembark. The bad thing is that it was the back seaters that were the last people to get off the bus even though they were sitting in the riskiest spot.

By the time we were getting off the Danfo bus at the filling station, the engine had already caught fire and was now burning. Even the petrol filling station staff were calling out to the driver to move the bus away and I had already boarded off the bus while I also forgot to take my school bag since it was a matter of life and death.

The army officer who saw what was happening quickly took my bag and started using it to quench the fire to prevent it from spreading. "I don suffer no be small", I said to myself and I quickly rushed to tell the army office that he was using my bag. He looked a bit angry with me and asked why I left it there if it was really my bag. I told him that I had to run for my life first before coming back to look for the bag. I figured that if I had managed to save my life by getting off the burning Danfo bus before it explodes, I would have saved my life at least and would not be so sad that my bag and books were destroyed.

The lesson I learnt here is that I should never sit in the back of a Danfo bus except it is not full to capacity and you can easily get out in times of emergency. It's always good to sit on a seat where you can easily and quickly disembark in times of energy such as when a fire starts out in the back where the engine is located.

At times, when I look at some of the things that has happened in my life and how I was saved from the worst, I tend to attribute it to a higher power and that's the power of God. I don't think the escape I had from the smoking and burning Danfo bus was easy or luck but an act of God's mercy. The truth is that, "na only God dey save us".

Posted by Felix Okoli on Wednesday February 10, 2016 at 9:19:17: