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Nigeria: 100 Die in Lagos Explosion
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Leadership (Abuja)
16 May 2008
Posted to the web 16 May 2008
Adesoji Oyinlola
No fewer than 100 people, including two school children, were in the early hours of yesterday killed by a fire incident which erupted from a pipeline at Ijagun, Alimosho Local Government Area of Lagos, razing down several houses, including a secondary school.
LEADERSHIP gathered that the pipeline, which had been vandalised by some suspected criminals, caught fire and exploded around Pako bus-stop area of Ijegun at about 11am.
Some eyewitness told our correspondents that the fire razed many houses, including Ijegun Comprehensive High School.
Policemen were immediately drafted to the area to ensure security.
As at the time of this report, no official of the National Emergency Agency (NEMA), Lagos State officials or any other government official was on hand to salvage the situation.
LEADERSHIP gathered from residents of the area that the pipeline burst was occasioned by activities of construction workers on the Ikotun - Ijedun Road where the pipelines passed through. The high level of casualty was attributed to the closeness of the buildings to the pipelines.
Efforts by the Lagos State fire service men to put out the inferno had yielded no result as the fire spread afar while survivors scampered for their lives.
Meanwhile, Lagos State government has permanently stationed some buses in the area to rescue victims of the incident to the Lagos State Teaching Hospital, where many people seriously wounded by the inferno are placed in the emergency wards.
Police public relations officer Frank Uba confirmed the incident but refused to make further comment.
Incidents of fire are on the increase in Lagos State. It would be recalled that no fewer than 25 vehicles and four houses were lost to fire last week when a tanker carrying a substance suspected to be combustible chemical caught fire in Fadeyi axis of the city.
Last year, a similar incident happened in the area, leading to killing of thousands of people.
Red Cross officials said many injured people had been taken to hospital and they were still trying to rescue more.
Among the dead is a two-year-old baby, emergency relief workers said.
"The fire is still going on, a lot of people are dead. Houses are burned. People are running for their lives," the AFP news agency quoted a Red Cross volunteer as saying.
At least 36 people have been taken to a nearby military hospital, National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) spokesman Abdulsalam Mohammed said.
Nigeria is one of the world's major oil producers and pipelines cut through many residential areas, both in cities such as Lagos and oil-producing areas.
Several of these have exploded, often when local people cut holes in them to steal oil.
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) says there are at least 400 acts of vandalism on its pipelines each year, reports the AP news agency.
At least 40 people were killed in a pipeline explosion in December in Lagos last year.
In 2006, some 400 people were killed in two blasts in Lagos.
Meanwhile, the Lagos State government has expressed its sympathy with victims of the incident yesterday and appealled to the public to refrain from making inflamatory comment on the issue.
Previous Pipeline Disasters
December 2007: At least 40 people killed in Lagos
December 2006: At least 250 killed in Lagos
May 2006: At least 150 killed in Lagos
Dec 2004: At least 20 killed in Lagos
Sept 2004: At least 60 killed in Lagos
June 2003: At least 105 killed in Abia State
Jul 2000: At least 300 killed in Warri
Mar 2000: At least 50 killed in Abia State
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Oct 1998: At least 1,000 killed in Jesse
i really think Soji should clarify his facts before uploading on site. assumptions are costly especially when they are not complimentary. I live in Alimoso local government where the fire broke out yesterday and i am also a journalist with one of the leading national dailies in Nigeria, whose name i want to be silent on. There was no deliberate human vandalisation on the pipeline that caught fire yesterday as the paragraph 2 of Soji's story implies. it was purely an escavator's accident and truly the fire raged on till about 7pm yesterday 15th May. I will that factual errors... [Read Full Text]
This vandalism is not an unusual occurence. Has the government learned anything from this and has the government made any plan in the past to protect the citizens from a repetition of such an incident? The answer is very likely 'NO'. There seems to be no 'will' and few months down the road, it will be repeated again. IT IS ONLY WHERE THERE IS NO WILL THAT THERE IS NO WAY OUT!
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