Nigerian fuel tanker fire kills at least 95 on Thursday after a gas oil tanker crashed on the east-west road in Nigeria’s oil-producing Niger Delta and took fire as people assayed to scoop up fuel, a Reuters witness stated.
“Early this morning a tanker loaded with petrol collapsed in Okogbe and people paraded to the scene evidently to scoop the spilled fuel and all of a sudden there was fire leading to casualties,” Rivers State police spokesman Ben Ugwuegbulam said.
Ugwuegbulam told it was too early to give a casualty figure but a Reuters witness at the scene saw 92 bodies of men, women and children.
Hundreds of people crowded together as soldiers and emergency workers lifted bodies into ambulances and police trucks. The fuel tanker was a pile of smoldering ash, twisted metal and melting tyres.
Crashes are common on Nigeria’s pot-holed and poorly asserted roads, and in a region where most people live on less than $2 a day the chance to accumulate spilling petrol is too much of a enticement, despite the high risk of fires.
The east-west road runing across the oil-producing region, has been scheduled for development for almost a decade and money is apportioned for it in the budget annually.
Nigeria, Africa’s greatest oil producer, is troubled by corruption and inefficiency. Most years only about half budgeted programmes are carried out.
