By The New York Times (World News) | Created at 2024-10-16 13:50:09 | Updated at 2024-10-16 16:18:35
2 hours ago
Africa|Fuel Tanker Explosion Leaves at Least 90 Dead in Nigeria
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/16/world/africa/nigeria-fuel-tanker-explosion.html
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Residents of a nearby town came to scoop up the spilled gasoline, but then the tanker exploded, setting off an inferno — an echo of several similar disasters in recent years.
By Ismail Auwal and Elian Peltier
Ismail Auwal reported from Kano, Nigeria, and Elian Peltier from Abidjan, Ivory Coast.
Oct. 16, 2024, 9:47 a.m. ET
It’s become an all too common scene on Nigeria’s roads: A truck driver losing control of a fuel tanker. Residents rushing to collect the spilled gasoline, a pricey commodity. An explosion turning into a deadly inferno.
Such an incident in northern Nigeria on Tuesday left more than 90 people dead and at least 50 others injured, the latest in a series of similar catastrophes in a country where road accidents with death tolls in the dozens occur nearly every month.
Although road-related deaths in Nigeria are below Africa’s average, 5,000 people died and 31,000 others were injured in traffic accidents in the country last year, according to the government’s data. Poorly maintained roads, aging vehicles and loosely enforced safety regulations such as adherence to speed limits or use of safety belts have all been cited among the causes.
In early September, at least 59 people died when a passenger truck and two other vehicles hit a toppled-over fuel tanker that had caught fire. In April, more than 100 vehicles burned in a similar explosion. And in July last year, at least eight people died as they were trying to siphon off fuel from an overturned truck in the country’s southwest.
The episode on Tuesday night was set off when the driver of a fuel tanker swerved to avoid colliding with a truck on an expressway in the northern state of Jigawa, according to Lawan Shiisu, a police spokesman.
The tanker overturned, spilling fuel onto the roadway. Then, residents from the town of Majia rushed to scoop it up, in what seemed like an easy way to collect an increasingly expensive commodity in Nigeria, where fuel prices have spiked in recent months.
