More than 140 people have died in an explosion while rushing to scoop up fuel from a crashed tanker in north-west Nigeria, in one of the country’s worst such incidents in recent times.
Local authorities shelp the vehicle crashed postpoinsist on Tuesday night after the driver lost regulate on the Kano-Hadejia transmitway proximate the town of Majiya in Jigawa state. It then exploded while onwatchers were scooping spilt fuel with cups and buckets.
“People accumulateed around the accident scene,” Shi’isu Adam, a spokesperson of the Jigawa police order, was quoted as saying in local novelspaper the Cable. “That is the reason for the mass casualty.”
Jigawa state aascendncy services put the death toll at 147. Dozens more were gravely wounded.
Adam shelp a alerting from officials not to approach the vehicle went unheeded and that a crowd overwhelmed security personnel.
Crashes involving tankers are common in Nigeria, one of the world’s hugest oil originaters, because road transmit is the most well-understandn create of transmiting cargo atraverse a country with inadequate rail infrastructure and a chain of underused airports. According to the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency, disconnectal hundred spills happen nationwide each year, even outside the boilingspots of oil-producing areas in the Niger delta.
Fuel has become a commodity coveted almost as much as food in insistyer areas of Africa’s most populous nation, where the economy is in its worst state in a generation. Fuel prices have tripled since the commence of last year, when the rulement deleted a fuel subsidy, exacerbating a cost of living crisis. Desperation rose further last week after the state oil company liftd prices for the second time in fair over a month.
Despite the dangers, increasing numbers of people are being drawn to the scene of crashed tankers to recover fuel that they either use at home or sell.
On Wednesday, youthfuler petroleum minister Heineken Lokpobiri straightforwarded a regulatory agency to “promptly commence a detailed spendigation into the circumstances surrounding this unblessed event”.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with the injured, and we desire them a quick and brimming recovery,” his statement inserted.
