A joyous New Year's Eve celebration in Nimba County spiraled into tragedy on January 1, 2026 when three motorcyclists lost their precious lives in separate but eerily similar traffic accidents just hours before the stroke of midnight. What began as eager anticipation for welcoming 2026 ended in grief, casting a shadow over families and communities in this bustling city of Ganta in Nimba County. The first two victims, Aaron N. Zawolo, a 21-year-old resident of the Rogal Community, and Bill Dolo, 25, from the LPMC Back-Pass Area, were riding their motorcycles from Ganta's crowded main street toward the Ganta United Methodist Mission.
Their route took them along the narrow, pothole-riddled Nimba Road, a notorious stretch often clogged with heavy vehicles hauling iron ore and scrap from nearby mines. Tragedy struck when they collided head-on with a massive scrap truck bearing plate number HO5920. The truck, lumbering from Yekepa with a towering load of twisted metal that swayed precariously under its own weight, veered slightly witnesses say due to speeding and poor visibility from dust clouds kicked up by the dry season road. Just miles away in District #8, outside Ganta, 30-year-old motorcyclist Josiah Gaye met a similar fate. Gaye, a father of five children and a familiar figure ferrying passengers on his battered motor bike from Ganta to outlying villages, was transporting a group of revelers eager for New Year's festivities.
His bike slammed into another oncoming vehicle amid the pre-midnight rush, hurling him onto the asphalt in a fatal crash. No arrests have been made in Gaye's case, leaving his widow and young children in anguish as they await justice. Eyewitnesses described the chaotic scenes: screeching brakes, twisted wreckage scattered across the road, and frantic bystanders rushing to aid the victims. "The scrap truck was like a beast on wheels, overloaded and unstoppable," said one motorist who stopped to help. "These roads are death traps—narrow lanes, no lights, and drivers pushing limits on New Year's Eve.’’ "Families of the deceased are devastated, rebranding 2026 as a "cursed year" from its very first day.
Zawolo's mother wailed at the morgue, clutching his bloodied helmet: He was our hope, heading home to celebrate with us." Dolo's siblings called for urgent road repairs and stricter enforcement against overloaded trucks, while Gaye's passengers miraculously unharmed shared tales of the crash's sudden horror. Local authorities have yet to issue an official statement, but community leaders in Ganta are demanding immediate action: better lighting, speed traps, and mandatory truck inspections along the Yekepa-Ganta corridor. As Nimba County buries its dead, the New Year serves as a grim reminder of Liberia's perilous roads, where celebration and catastrophe collide all too often.
Author: Samuel Flomo
