CAIRO: The death toll from the explosion of a petrol tanker truck in Nigeria that killed people rushing to gather fuel has risen to 86, emergency services said Sunday.
The truck carrying 60,000 litres (nearly 16,000 gallons) of gasoline exploded after flipping over on a road in the centre of the country on Saturday, authorities said. Rescuers had previously put the toll at 70 dead.
“We buried 86 burnt corpses between 12:00 pm yesterday to 2:00 am of today,” said Ibrahim Audu Husseini, spokesman for the Niger state’s emergency management agency.
“It took us 14 hours to bury the bodies because we couldn’t get excavators and had to get locals to dig the mass grave manually.”
Another 52 people suffered “severe burns from the explosion”, he added.
The blast struck at the Dikko junction on the road linking the federal capital Abuja to the northern city of Kaduna.
A crowd of people rushed to the spot where the tanker had turned over in search of fuel, whose price has soared in an economic crisis.
“I saw a woman carrying a gallon of fuel and the gallon exploded and the fuel splashed over me,” Dalandi Abdullahi, told AFP from the hospital treating his flame-ravaged arms and torso.
“That was how I was burnt,” the 29-year-old explained.
Shopkeeper Bashiru Umar, who lost merchandise in the blaze, said: “The generator was the cause of the fire, and there was no water to extinguish it.”
“Those who got burnt were not the ones fetching the oil… Some were also part of the crowd that got burnt, as the crowd was large,” the 28-year-old added.
After taking power in 2023, President Bola Tinubu abolished a costly fuel subsidy, driving up food and transport costs.
He also ended currency controls, causing the naira’s value to plummet.
Tinubu has repeatedly called for patience, arguing that his reforms will help attract foreign investors and get the economy moving again.
In the meantime Africa’s most populous country has seen inflation touch three-decade highs, ticking at more than 30 percent over the past year.
With petrol prices rising fivefold in 18 months — despite the country being Africa’s largest oil producer — some Nigerians have become willing to risk their lives to collect fuel from vehicles involved in road accidents.
More than 170 people died in similar fashion in October in Jigawa state, in northern Nigeria.
In a statement late on Sunday, the country’s information minister Mohammed Idris said that “over 265 people have so far lost their lives in this kind of incident… in the past five months”.
Tinubu expressed “deep sorrow over the fuel tanker explosion”, a statement from his office said Sunday, regretting “the tragic and preventable nature of the incident”.
He ordered a national campaign to “raise public awareness about the severe risks and environmental dangers of scooping fuel from fallen tankers”.
Accidents on poorly maintained roads are a frequent occurrence in Nigeria.
Last September, an explosion caused by a collision between a tanker and a truck carrying passengers and livestock claimed at least 59 lives in Niger State. In 2020, the Federal Road Safety Corps listed 1,531 fuel tanker accidents, claiming over 535 lives.
