Greater than 140 folks have died in an explosion whereas dashing to scoop up gas from a crashed tanker in north-west Nigeria, in one of many nation’s worst such incidents in current instances.
Native authorities stated the car crashed late on Tuesday evening after the motive force misplaced management on the Kano-Hadejia expressway close to the city of Majiya in Jigawa state. It then exploded whereas onlookers have been scooping spilt gas with cups and buckets.
“Individuals gathered across the accident scene,” Shi’isu Adam, a spokesperson of the Jigawa police command, was quoted as saying in native newspaper the Cable. “That’s the reason for the mass casualty.”
Jigawa state emergency companies put the demise toll at 147. Dozens extra have been significantly wounded.
Adam stated a warning from officers to not method the car went unheeded and {that a} crowd overwhelmed safety personnel.
Crashes involving tankers are frequent in Nigeria, one of many world’s largest oil producers, as a result of highway transport is the most well-liked type of conveying cargo throughout a rustic with insufficient rail infrastructure and a chain of underused airports. In keeping with the Nationwide Oil Spill Detection and Response Company, a number of hundred spills occur nationwide annually, even exterior the hotspots of oil-producing areas within the Niger delta.
Gas has turn out to be a commodity coveted nearly as a lot as meals in poorer areas of Africa’s most populous nation, the place the financial system is in its worst state in a technology. Gas costs have tripled for the reason that begin of final yr, when the federal government eliminated a gas subsidy, exacerbating a price of residing disaster. Desperation rose additional final week after the state oil firm raised costs for the second time in simply over a month.
Regardless of the dangers, rising numbers of individuals are being drawn to the scene of crashed tankers to recuperate gas that they both use at dwelling or promote.
On Wednesday, junior petroleum minister Heineken Lokpobiri directed a regulatory company to “promptly begin an in depth investigation into the circumstances surrounding this unlucky occasion”.
“Our ideas and prayers are with the injured, and we want them a swift and full restoration,” his assertion added.
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