More than 70 people were burned to death in northern Nigeria when a tanker lorry caught fire as they were scooping fuel from it, police said on Wednesday.
The accident happened in Kaduna State on Monday evening, the police spokesperson for Kaduna, Saad Yahaya, said.
”More than 70 people have been confirmed dead. There are some survivors but we don’t know exactly how many,” he said.
”The tanker turned over, the villagers came to scoop fuel and then the tanker caught fire,” he explained.
Yahaya said the tanker overturned while trying to park in the village of Katugal, about 150km south of the state capital, Kaduna.
The federal road safety chief for Kaduna, Charles Okpabio, confirmed that there were survivors but declined to say how many or where they are being treated.
It was not immediately clear if the impact of the accident caused fuel to leak from the tanker or whether the vehicle was vandalised.
Events perceived as giving a negative image of the country are not reported on by state media in Nigeria. This explains why news of the accident took so long to become public.
Road accidents with large casualty figures are common in Nigeria where vehicles are often poorly maintained, overloaded and driven in a reckless fashion.
In December last year a driver lost control of his lorry outside Kaduna crashed into a crowd, crushing scores of people to death.
Almost equally common are fires where people perish whilst scooping fuel, be it from oil company installations or trucks.
Nigeria’s tens of millions who live in poverty rarely pass up on opportunities to gather free fuel, which can always be sold in jerry cans to motorists who run out, from pipelines or vehicles that have either been damaged or vandalised.
Vandalism of pipelines and related installations is extremely common, with an official report published last July registering 2 258 such acts in the previous five years.
Last December a fire at a vandalised pipeline in Lagos killed about 260 people who were scooping fuel from it in the hope of making a few dollars.
Nigerian authorities habitually show little sympathy for those who die in such explosions, condemning them as greedy.
Nigeria is Africa’s biggest crude-oil producer but nevertheless relies on imports for its refined product requirements as its own refineries are not in working order. — Sapa-AFP