Nigeria: at least 100 killed in petrol tanker fire

At least 100 men, women and children were killed on Thursday in Nigeria after a petrol tanker crashed and caught fire as a crowd gathered around it to try and scoop up fuel, officials said.

"The tanker driver was trying to avoid a head-on collision with two oncoming vehicles. He lost control and spilled its contents," said Ben Ugwuegbulam, a Rivers State police spokesman. "The villagers trooped out to scoop the spilled fuel. The driver even warned them to leave the scene and suddenly there was fire ..."

Many of the dead were motorcycle taxi operators, known locally as "Okada", who raced to fill up their tanks after learning of the crash, according to an AFP photographer at the scene.

Motorcycle taxi driver Kingsley Jafure said the vehicle collision occurred at roughly 6:00 am, and the spilled petrol caught fire about 90 minutes later, but officials said the time between the crash and the blaze was shorter.

"At about 7:30 while I was inside trying to decide whether to go (scoop fuel) or not. That is when I saw that the tanker exploded," Jafure said.

"Clear the carnage"
The area had been cordoned off by security forces, while swarms of rescue workers were on the ground, NEMA and an AFP reporter said.

The state's information commissioner Ibim Semenitari said that the fire had been put out but emergency services were still trying "to clear the carnage."

"More than 100 people were killed in the inferno from the petrol tanker, while around 50 with severe burns have been hospitalised," she said.

Chaotic situation
Some of those taken to the hospital were burned beyond recognition, while others appeared treatable, said Geoffrey Ikogha a local chief in Ahoada, near the oil hub of Port Harcourt.

But the chief medical officer at a nearby hospital, who asked not to be named, said he had neither the medicine nor the equipment to treat patients with severe burns.

"The doctors are not attending to us, they can only give a drip to the victims and now we have to take our brother away before he dies," Sunday Akpara, whose brother was burned in the fire, told Reuters.

President Goodluck Jonathan issued a statement ordering relief to be sent to the wounded.

[related-articles]"President Jonathan is particularly distraught by the fact that once again, so many Nigerian lives have been lost in an avoidable fuel fire disaster," the statement said.

Corruption and inefficiency
Fuel tanker crashes are common on Nigeria's poorly maintained roads, and in a region where most people live on less than $2 a day the chance to collect spilt petrol was too much of a temptation, despite the high risk of fires.

The east-west road where the crash happened runs across the oil-producing region and has been scheduled for development for almost a decade. Each year, money is allocated for the road in the federal budget.

Nigeria, Africa's biggest oil producer, is plagued by corruption and inefficiency. Most years, only about half of its budgeted programmes are actually implemented.
Source: Reuters/AFP