I thought I had given Nigeria the last of my words for 2025. Then the Lagos–Ibadan Expressway demanded another paragraph, this time with two lives as the punctuation.

On Monday, 29 December 2025, a crash involving Anthony Joshua on the Lagos–Ibadan Expressway killed two occupants and left Joshua with minor injuries, according to the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC). The FRSC’s preliminary account says the Lexus conveying Joshua was suspected to be speeding, lost control during an overtaking manoeuvre, and crashed into a stationary Sinotruck “well packed by the side of the road.” International reporting also confirms the deaths of two close associates and places the crash on the Lagos–Ibadan corridor.

A tragedy like this should have produced one national instinct: grief, followed by sober accountability. Instead, it produced two competing impulses that are now wrestling over the bodies.

One group said what Nigerians have said too many times after too many night-time horrors: “Nigeria happened.” They were not composing a slogan; they were reacting from muscle memory formed by years of stories in which heavy vehicles become silent, stationary traps and ordinary people pay with their lives.

The other group insisted Nigerians were “de-marketing” the country. The loudest and most public articulation of that argument came from Reno Omokri, the Ambassadorial Chief Executive Marketer of Nigeria, who urged Nigerians to “wait for the full details” rather than make claims whose “veracity” they cannot be sure of, warning that international headlines were quoting Nigerians to portray Nigeria as a “failed state.”

Calls for accuracy are fair. Grief is not a licence to invent. But there is something morally disorienting about turning a fatal crash into a public-relations battleground, as though the primary emergency is the national image, not the human loss.

Because even if the FRSC’s preliminary findings on speed and overtaking stand, their own wording still forces a question that image-management cannot silence: a “stationary truck,” “well packed by the side of the road,” on a major expressway, already narrow by global standards at speed, in real traffic.

If speed is the match, then road conditions, enforcement culture, breakdown protocols, signage discipline, towing response, and hazard management are the dry, petrol-soaked grass. When the fire comes, blaming only the match is not seriousness; it is convenience.

And from the images in circulation, another question follows: why did the FRSC not address the more basic issue, why our road infrastructure remains archaic in 2025, and why key corridors are still built without proper shoulders where vehicles can pull off in emergencies, instead of being forced to stop on the carriageway and then described as “well packed by the side of the road”?

In countries like Germany, the federal motorways the Autobahn are engineered to a far higher standard: wider carriageways, proper shoulders, clear lane discipline, consistent signage, and disciplined hazard management. Even where some stretches have no general speed limit, the infrastructure is built on the assumption that breakdowns and emergencies must be handled off live lanes, not on them; the safety architecture is treated as non-negotiable.

And the marketers of Nigeria would rather, despite claiming they are well travelled, deposit us in convenient pockets of ignorance and double standards.

And this is why Nigerians’ reflex is not frivolous. It is trauma.

Consider the pattern Nigerians carry in their heads when they see the words “stationary truck”:

1. In April 2010, rapper Dagrin died after his car ran into a stationary truck in Mushin, Lagos, reported by multiple outlets at the time as involving a stationary truck/lorry around Alakara/near Mushin.
2. The Nation recalled the death of Channels Television journalist Lekan Asimi, describing a crash into a stationary vehicle under the Maryland bridge in Lagos.
3. In March 2016, The Nation reported a fuel-laden bus that rammed into a stationary truck in Isolo, Lagos; three died immediately and a fourth victim, Segun Oluwole, later died in hospital.
4. In December 2021, reports said Pastor Ayo Adun died after his car rammed into a stationary trailer in Lokoja.
5. Punch reported that a container-laden truck suffered brake failure, rammed into a stationary truck, and the container fell, within a broader accounting of container-related deaths in Lagos.

Related named fatalities tied to heavy-vehicle/stationary-vehicle dynamics (not always “direct colliders,” but within the same recurring hazard ecosystem):

6. Muyideen Agboola Aromire (a.k.a. Alade Aromire), Reported to have died in a road accident in Lagos, with accounts locating the crash along the Lagos–Ibadan Expressway corridor.
7. Adeola Durojaiye (wife of late actor Ishola Durojaiye, a.k.a. Alasari), who also died in a car crash, was reported to have died after being hit/crushed by a truck in the Adatan area of Abeokuta, Ogun State.

8 Chidinma Ajoku and Chima Nnaekpe, Reported killed when a container fell onto their bus; reporting states a truck suffered brake failure, rammed into a stationary truck, and the container fell off.

These cases are not identical. They do not prove the cause of Joshua’s crash. But they explain the psychology of the public reaction: Nigerians have learned, by repetition, that “stationary” does not mean “safe,” and “packed by the side” does not mean “not a threat.”

So when Nigerians react fiercely, it is not always because they want to embarrass their country. It is because they have buried too many people with the same plotline.

This is where the “de-marketing” argument becomes a kind of moral misdirection. It frames outrage as disloyalty and converts public safety into a reputation contest. It pressures citizens to manage perception while institutions manage explanations.

Even the FRSC statement, condolences and warnings included leans heavily on driver behaviour: excessive speed, wrongful overtaking, traffic violations. Fine. Enforce it. Prosecute it. Educate it. But do not stop there, because that is where the country repeatedly stops: at the convenient place where accountability can be outsourced to the dead.

If we must “wait for full details,” then let the waiting produce something practical, not performative:

1. Publish the full crash investigation promptly, including why the truck was stationary and what hazard warnings were present.
2. Enforce strict protocols for breakdowns and roadside stops on high-speed corridors, reflective warnings, rapid towing, and penalties for non-compliance.
3. Treat emergency response as life infrastructure, not a social-media argument, training, equipment, and coordinated dispatch that does not rely on passersby.
4. Stop confusing patriotism with silence. A country is not protected by denying its problems; it is protected by fixing them.

Two men are dead. One global figure survived. The rest of us are invited again to choose between mourning and marketing.

Refuse the invitation.

Nigeria does not become dignified because we win arguments online. Nigeria becomes dignified when a stationary truck on a major road is treated as an urgent danger, not a footnote; when emergency response is a system, not luck; and when the death of citizens is not repackaged as an opportunity to score points.

That is not “de-marketing.” That is the minimum respect we owe the living, and the dead.

See you in the New Year God’s willing.

Do have an INSPIRED New Year with the family.