Evelyn Usman & Yemise Adeoye
17 May 2008
Lagos — The death toll in the pipeline explosion that rocked Ijegun area of Lagos rose to 43 yesterday.
The charred remains of babies were discovered after the raging fire that consumed a total of forty-seven shops, fourteen cars, eleven houses and twenty-eight motorcycles was eventually put out in the early hours of yesterday.
Besides, Saturday Vanguard reliably gathered that the Red Cross official, (names withheld) who was quoted to have given the number of casualties in the tragic incident as 100 has ben queried over what was described as a "falsified figure."
He was said to have been asked to write a letter of apology to that effect, as he was also faulted for giving details when he was not authorised to do so.
Meantime, the Lagos State government said yesterday that only 15 people died in the inferno.
Investigation carried out yesterday at the scene of the explosion revealed that most people, particularly pupils of Local Government Primary School, as well as students of Ijegun Comprehensive Junior\Senior High School died during the ensuing stampede.
It was gathered that when the explosion occurred, gate men at the Local Government Primary School initially locked the gates apparently to prevent the pupils from running into danger. But when the atmosphere became tensed, the gate men and other staff were said to have run for dear lives leaving everyone to his fate.
At that point, students from Ijegun Comprehensive School who ran into the primary school premises with a view to linking Ijegun Junction, were said to have jointly brought down the wall of the school to facilitate their escape.
But most of them were trampled on, at the end of which eight, out of sixteen pupils who were rushed to Corner Stone Hospital , Ijegun, reportedly died on Thursday evening.
Another pupil whose identity could not be ascertained reportedly gave up the ghost yesterday.
It was also learnt that three residents of the area met their untimely death when they were run over by vehicles whose drivers attempted to flee the fire zone. One of them was Mr. Adeyemi Aderinola who was said to have been hit by a vehicle as he was scampering for safety.
Adeyemi, a resident of number 30 Isolo road, Ijegun, who was rushed to Isolo Hospital among others injured, unfortunately gave up the ghost yesterday morning .
At the Red Cross tracing camp, located at AP filling station, Ijegun, the officials were seen compiling names of those who were in the hospital.
As at 2pm, only twenty-two names out of fifty-six victims who were burnt had so far been compiled.
Saturday Vanguard gathered that the twenty-two persons were those who could speak and identify themselves.
Families whose members were yet to be traced since the incident, displayed their photographs on the board provided by the Red Cross. Some of those displayed were; 2-year-old Tosin Olatunji, 28-year-old Jude Udeh and 23-year-old Ijeoma Nwaeke, amongst others.
The Alimosho Local Government Area is currently harbouring twelve displaced families.
Among dignitaries who visited the scene yesterday were the Deputy Governor of Lagos State, Mrs. Sarah Sosan; the Assistant Inspector General of Police in-charge of zone II, Mr. Mohammed Abubarka and the Commissioner for Health, Dr. Jide Idris.
The Lagos State Chairman of the Nigeria Red Cross Society, Deacon Timothy Oladele, confirmed the discovery of a three-month -old baby yesterday morning beside the excavator which broke the under ground pipeline during a construction work on the road, that resulted in the explosion.
He, however, frowned at what he described as an exaggerated figure of casualties, maintaining that only 39 persons lost their lives as at Thursday. Said he, "Some people put the death toll at 100 and even 200.
This is because they cannot differentiate between those that died and those who sustained high degree burns. Several persons were carried on the stretchers to the ambulances but not all of them were dead. We recorded 39 dead persons, some of who gave up the ghost on the way to the hospital on Thursday".
The blast erupted near a school and the area was littered with shoes and bags belonging to pupils.
Chinedu Eze, 19, was writing an exam at the Ijegun Comprehensive Junior High School when the explosion erupted. He told how local residents broke down the wall in front of the school to help pupils escape the fire.
Local people threw sand and water at the giant flames in a bid to help firefighters extinguish the blaze which sent a huge cloud of black smoke into the sky.
Firefighters concentrated their efforts on preventing the fire from reaching a petrol filling station, which was surrounded by a muddy pond of water.
"When the Caterpillar driver came, the people here warned him there was a pipeline under the ground.
He said he'd be careful, but the minute he started work this happened," said Jimoh Hazan, a middle-aged man who sat with several female relatives on white plastic chairs in front of the remains of his house.
"There was a terrible action - people came to loot us while we were running away from the fire," said Hazan, another resident.
Pipeline fires are commonplace in Nigeria, Africa's biggest oil producer, in part because of poor pipeline maintenance but also because of thieves who vandalise pipelines to siphon petrol to sell on the black market.
On December 25, around 40 people died in a fire at a pipeline in a creek in Lagos after it was vandalised by looters. Exactly one year earlier, more than 200 people died scooping fuel from a vandalised pipeline in another Lagos district.
More than 1,000 villagers burnt to death in 1998 in Jesse, near the southern Delta State oil city of Warri, following the vandalisation of a fuel pipeline. Victims were suspected of scooping petrol to sell on the black market.
State-run oil giant, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), has campaigned against pipeline vandalisation. It says between 400 and 500 acts of vandalism occur every year on its pipelines.
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