More than 140 people were killed in northern Nigeria on Tuesday after an overturned fuel tanker exploded, emergency officials said, in one of the deadliest road disasters in the past decade in Africa’s most populous country.
While the death toll was exceptionally high, such incidents have become all too common on Nigeria’s roads: a truck driver lost control of a fuel tanker, and people rushed in to collect the spilled gasoline from the overturned vehicle. Shortly after, an explosion turned into a deadly inferno.
Road-related deaths in Nigeria are below Africa’s average, but 5,000 people died and 31,000 others were injured in traffic accidents in the country of about 220 million people last year, according to government data. Poorly maintained roads, aging vehicles and loosely enforced safety regulations such as a lack of adherence to speed limits or using safety belts have all been cited among the causes of high death tolls.
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 fuel from an overturned truck in the country’s southwest.
The disaster 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 near the town of Majia, spilling fuel onto the roadway. Local residents 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.
For decades, Nigerians had access to some of the cheapest gasoline in Africa, thanks to a government fuel subsidy. But because that cost has amounted to up to a quarter of the country’s import bill, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration has moved to abandon the subsidy.
Higher fuel prices have been a key factor behind nationwide protests over the rising cost of living that have embroiled Nigeria for months. Gas prices in the country have more than tripled over the last year, while the naira, the national currency, has lost more than 70 percent of its value.
On Tuesday, despite police warnings and attempts to cordon off the area around the overturned tanker, according to Mr. Shiisu, many people gathered to collect the spilled fuel.
“The tanker, loaded with petrol, ignited shortly after the crash, causing an inferno that engulfed numerous people in the vicinity,” Mr. Shiisu said.
As of Wednesday afternoon, 147 people had been declared dead, said Haruna Mairiga, the executive secretary of Nigeria’s state emergency services.
Videos shared by Nigerian news outlets showed a truck engulfed in flames and a trail of fire along the road.
Mr. Shiisu said the death toll was likely to rise, given that several of the injured were in critical condition.
According to a World Health Organization report published this year, sub-Saharan African countries accounted for nearly 20 percent of road fatalities globally in 2021, even though they hold only 3 percent of the world’s vehicles.
Last month, the Nigerian government introduced a mobile app designed to prevent road accidents in the country. At least two deadly road accidents have caused dozens of deaths since.
The post Fuel Tanker Explosion Leaves at Least 140 Dead in Nigeria appeared first on New York Times.