The scene, afar off, looked like a swimming show. But on a closer view, it was a miscellany of youths— boys and girls— waddling through a surging pool that looked like a flowing river. But the torrential flow was actually not water. It was a large pool of petrol sloshing from a fallen fuel-laden tanker.
The youth busied themselves scooping away, totally incautious of the looming danger staring them on the face. It was a video that trended last week on the ever ubiquitous social media. But there was no information about the location and the time. It was also not clear what happened next.
However, a similar scene that played out penultimate Saturday in Niger State spewed blood, tears and sorrow. By press time, at least 98 persons, including a pregnant woman and many children, had been confirmed dead and 55 others critically injured when people were scooping fuel from a crashed petrol tanker.
It was a disaster of horrendous proportions. It was quite unsightly and heart-rending seeing humans roast like logs of wood. The national grief thrown up has been pervasive. The tragic incident occurred penultimate Saturday morning when a speeding petrol tanker crashed on Dikko-Maje Road on the expressway between Niger and Kaduna states. Eyewitnesses recalled that the moment the petrol tanker crashed, the people around were confused at first, not knowing what to do.
Then, the tanker began to spill fuel and when people saw the fuel, probably because there were no immediate security personnel around to either control traffic or ward off people from the scene, they on impulse rushed to the fallen tanker to scoop the fuel. It was then the ear-shattering explosion occurred.
Many people, who came to scoop fuel from the tanker,” he recalled, “lost their lives; they were more than 80. I noticed that there were no emergency officials or fire service officers. No rescue from government agents. It was only vigilantes that came around to help. May God have mercy on us and accept the souls of the departed.”
Many of the victims, who were engulfed by the furious palls of fire, were said to be members of the community, passers-by and, quite painfully, some of the sympathizers who rushed for a rescue mission. But it beggars belief that colossal waste of human lives resulting from fuel scooping from fallen tankers has become a recurring tragedy.
Year in year out, repeated tales play out in a vicious circle that is fast developing into a national emergency, in which people literally commit suicide scooping fuel around highly combustible fallen or broken down petrol tankers. It is akin to consciously bumbling into the lair of ferociously ravenous lions!
So, could it have been just a case of poverty? Of course, poverty is a contributory factor because to some desperate people, with a warped sense, the temporary gain from helping themselves to the precious liquid overweighs the danger, but we believe, viewing the issue from a psychological perspective, that it goes beyond that. We believe a combination of grinding misery and hunger, which are deepening daily as a fallout of the current cost-of-living crisis, as well as sheer greed, ignorance and idiocy are some of the underpinnings that could, perhaps, reasonably explain such cranky risks!
For example, what do we make of a scenario where young persons began to mill around another tanker that broke down in Bida town also in Niger State, barely 48 hours after 98 souls perished not far away? While some of the people in bravado managed to scoop, others fled in different directions, apparently to prevent being caught up in an unfortunate situation.
A petrified resident was quoted as wondering that “the people were not even afraid despite the earlier assumption that it was petrol.” Although it later emerged that the tanker was carrying groundnut oil, what would have happened if it was actually carrying fuel?
However, what happened three days after this was no fluke. Another monumental disaster was narrowly averted this time in Jalingo, Taraba State, where residents, mostly youths, in their numbers were caught scooping fuel from a fallen tanker laden with fuel. It was at Mile 6 Market on Jalingo- Numan Road, despite recent reports of a tanker explosion killing scores of persons in Niger State.
The tanker was said to have been involved in an accident at Mile 6 Roundabout, directly beside the market at about 11:45 am.Though most of the market men and women rushed to close their shops for fear of fire explosion, youths within the area were seen trooping out of their houses with cans and buckets, scooping fuel leaking from the fallen tanker.
It took the intervention of men of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence (NSCDC), who drove to the scene to chase them away with many of them having already taken away hundreds of litres before the arrival of the security men. Some of the youth positioned drums few meters away from the scene where they were seen depositing the fuel they scooped from the tanker.
The penultimate Saturday explosion is the latest in a slew of tanker accidents across the country which, according to reports, have claimed many lives and destroyed properties, especially within the past four months.
For example, on September 8, 2024, about 50 people were killed when a petrol tanker collided with another vehicle at Agaie-Lapai Road, in Niger State, resulting in an explosion. About 24 hours earlier, another petrol tanker caught fire in the Iyana-Ajia area of Egbeda Local Government, Ibadan, destroying multiple vehicles.
A Nigerian farmer, Mustapha Majiya, much like the biblical Job, reportedly lost almost 50 members of his extended family in a Jigawa State agrarian community of Majiya on Tuesday, October 18, 2024 in a tanker explosion, which claimed the lives at least 170 people and injured over 100 others. It was described as one of the nation’s deadliest tanker accidents in recent years.
The explosion occurred when a tanker heading to Kano from Yobe State overturned at Majiya,spewing a massive inferno, while the residents were scooping fuel from the fallen tanker. The farmer rued: “My nephews, Nuradeen Rabiu, 16, and Dini Babalo, 17, were among those killed. They tried to stop people from getting too close to the tanker and scooping fuel before the explosion.”
Reports said the tanker was overloaded and had been travelling on a main road through the town that had no street lights when the driver lost control and overturned as another vehicle approached. When residents realised there was what they must have regarded as ‘manna from heaven,’ they rushed to get buckets and other receptacles to scoop the precious gift that had seeped in unannounced!
On July 3, 2023, a spark from a phone ignited a fire at an accident site in Ondo State, where people had gathered to scoop fuel. The inferno claimed 20 lives. On November 10, 2022, a petrol tanker crashed and exploded in Kogi State, killing at least 12 people. On October 20, 2022, 10 people were confirmed dead in a tanker explosion, which occurred at Araromi town, near the Sagamu Interchange on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway.
However, aside the people’s desperation goaded by poverty, there are other factors that have been canvassed as having been fueling this national malaise. Some of the factors include infrastructural deficiencies like the ubiquitous terrible roads, plagued by legendary potholes, some the size of craters, uneven surfaces and narrow lanes, which cause frequent tanker accidents; and reckless driving, even in spite of the poor state of many of the highways; overloading of the tankers, which makes navigation of the roads,especially hazardous bends, terribly herculean as well as poor mechanical conditions of many of the tankers plying the routes.
Lately too, the withdrawal of fuel subsidy and the subsequent spiraling of the prices have made the commodity a very scarce one. So, in impoverished communities, especially in the northern part where fuel is scarce and costly, the highly depraved residents, in a wicked ironic twist, consider the frequent tanker accidents as a sort of ‘blessing in disguise,’ in spite of the underlining danger!
The colossal losses of human lives and the frequency of occurrences of tanker accidents, most of which result in explosions because of the medley of hangers-on who will always scoop the precious liquid sloshing from the fallen tankers in spite of the highly combustible scenes, we admonish the authorities to declare a state of emergency on this matter.
It is high time the federal and state governments and the interconnected industry-wide stakeholders took the bulls by the horns and address the bottlenecks that have been contributory to the alarming frequency of tanker accidents and the resultant explosions wasting precious lives.
Let the National Orientation Agency (NOA) and the National Emergency Agency (NEMA) mount a systematic anti-scooping-fuel-from-fallen tankers national campaign that will reach most of the rural communities, which have developed the tragic predilection for swooping on fuel-laden tankers the moment they fall, a development that actually hastens their explosions. What is more, any careless spark from a cigarette, striking of matches or answering calls too close to sloshing fuel can ignite an explosion.
It should be a carrot and stick approach. While the awareness campaign adopts a conciliatory approach, translated into the various local languages for thorough education and enlightenment among the vulnerable population about the dangers of fuel scooping from fallen tankers, stringent laws should also be promulgated and strictly enforced. This is with a viewing to making scapegoats of some people, which we believe will, to a certain extent, deter those who may want to remain recalcitrant. It is high time we stopped or at least reduced avoidable deaths through fuel scooping.
In the final analysis and as a long-term measure, the Federal Government should begin to frontally address safety lapses in fuel transportation by road. One way of achieving that is by seeking the assistance of international donor governments and bodies in gradually building underground tunnels for the exclusive use of fuel tankers and other heavy duty vehicles. This is the standard practice abroad. Not only will this measure reduce tanker accidents, it will also save the normal roads from the wears and tears which heavy duty vehicles cause them.
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