Schoolchildren among 80 killed in fireball after truck explodes in Nigeria

Published on Saturday 10 October 2009 19:59

SCHOOLCHILDREN in a minibus were among up to 80 people burned to death when a fuel tanker truck exploded in Nigeria, reportedly after a policeman fired a shot to keep passers-by away from a road accident.

The truck hit a pothole and overturned on Friday on the Onitsha to Enugu road in the south of the country, spilling its cargo of petrol.

Several people said the truck exploded when a policeman fired his gun in the air. One witness said people had been trying to scoop up and recover the spilled petrol. At least five minibuses, packed with up to 18 passengers each, and two cars were incinerated by the fireball.

"Immediately the policeman shot into the air, the tanker burst into flames that engulfed other vehicles close by and also trapped some of the people that were gathered around the scene who were not fast enough to escape," a witness told The Nation newspaper.

Another anonymous onlooker said: "We were standing nearby and could do nothing while these little children burnt to ashes due to the level of heat that was coming from the fire."

Anambra State road safety director Ben Ekenna admitted local roads were in a bad state and was quoted as saying that, "if something isn't done quickly, tragedies like this will happen again". Accidents on Nigeria's poorly maintained inter-city roads are common, with trucks habitually driving at breakneck speeds.

Nigerian newspapers are filled daily with images of overturned trucks, flooded or collapsed roads and massive potholes. Almost everything in Nigeria, including petrol and oil , are transported by road because of a lack of rail infrastructure, increasing the possibility of accidents. Federal road safety body FRSC says that around 400 people are killed in road accidents every month in Nigeria.

When he was elected in May 2007, President Umaru Yar'adua promised to improve road and rail transport in the country of 140 million people. Last June, a road safety expert said Nigeria needed to treat the carnage on its roads as a national emergency.

Apollos Jediel, a coordinator of the National Emergency Management Agency, said: "We are daily being confronted by an epidemic that kills and maims on the scale of major infectious diseases like malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/Aids."

In addition, the oil-rich country often has domestic fuel shortages, making tanker spills dangerously attractive to poor Nigerians.