 100
killed in pipeline inferno
Nigeria -- An
oil pipeline explosion killed about 100 people on Thursday near a primary school
in a suburb north of Lagos, the Red Cross said.
An earth-moving
excavator at a road construction site accidentally burst the pipeline causing
the explosion and an inferno which engulfed adults and children stood nearby,
Red Cross official Sule Mekudi told AFP from the site of the disaster.
The blast erupted
near a primary school in the suburban town of Ijegun, and the area was littered
with shoes and bags belonging to pupils, a journalist at the scene told AFP.
Local people threw
sand and water at the flames in a bid to help firefighters extinguish the blaze,
witnesses said.
 "About
100 people were confirmed dead in the explosion. We have also evacuated about 20
others to the Ikeja general hospital," Mekudi told AFP. Most of the injured had
suffered serious burns, he added.
An emergency
medical stand has since been set up by officials of the Nigerian Red Cross and
Lagos State Ambulance Service where medical officers were attending to the
injured victims.
Men of the Lagos State Fire and Emergency Service were in the area trying to
curtail the fire. Their efforts, however, had yielded little results as at press
time as the inferno prevented them from getting close to the scene.
The explosion
reportedly took place at about 11.15 am and was alleged to have been caused by
construction workers fixing a road. An eye witness said the construction workers
were unaware that petrol pipes lay underneath the earth. He disclosed that in
the cause of the exercise, the pipe was ruptured and huge balls of fire engulfed
the whole area.
 An
earthmover belonging to a construction firm reportedly ruptured the pipes,
leading to a deafening explosion which destroyed the fence of two nearby
schools, Ijegun Government College and Ijegun Primary School. The fence was said
to have fallen on a number of the school children.
Many of the dead
included passengers, drivers and other artisans doing business inside the Ijegun
Motor Park. A woman identified simply as Biliki and her baby also perished in
the inferno.
A woman operating a
canteen in the park identified as Mama Rashida also died alongside some of her
customers. A lady selling cassettes, a palm wine seller vending his merchandise
on a bicycle and one Adewale, a bus conductor were also consumed by the raging
inferno. The palm wine seller reportedly struggled to crawl out of the flames.
He, however, died soon after.
An injured victim,
Mrs Akinremi, who operates a video club in the park said: “I was sitting down
when I heard a loud explosion and saw balls of fire. I stood up and took to my
heels. But the fire still caught up with me. But I thank God that I’m alive.”
 Another
victim, Suru Sosun, a bricklayer, said he was working in the area when the
explosion occured. He suffered burns on his back. Samuel Ahuati from Benin
Republic, another bricklayer, also suffered burns on his back, while fleeing
from the raging flames.
An eye witness,
Basil Aladinma, told Daily Sun that the contract for construction of the road
was awarded about five years ago. “But Fashola promised to do it for the people.
The construction of that road has unfortunately brought tears to the eyes of the
residents. But this is the work of the devil.”
A man whose son
attends Ijegun Primary School, Mr. Useni Olaiya, told Daily Sun how the boy,
Shina, escaped death by the whiskers.
“When the fence
collapsed, they started running and were falling over one another. My son jumped
over the fence and escaped. I thank God for sparing his life.”
Pandemonium
immediately broke out in the area. Panic stricken residents were hurrying out of
the place enmasse. Pupils of Ijegun Primary school where the dead children
attended were also evacuated from the area. The place at the moment can be
likened to a war-torn community.
 Cries
of wailing mothers in search of their children could be heard all over the
disaster scene. Anxious relations in search of their family members have also
taken over the area.
According to Theresa Nkiru Odinma, who was wailing uncontrollably, she was yet
to see her son, Chuks, who left for school in the morning hours before the
explosion.
“It was after he
left for school that the explosion happened. The teacher at school said they
have not seen him, and he has not returned home yet. I am finished. Where do I
go from here? That is the only eye that I have,” she cried.
Despite the death
recorded and the volatility of the area, some people were still seen scooping
fuel close to the site of the explosion.
Officials of the
Nigerian Red Cross on rescue mission have been moving the corpses to the morgue,
while also administering first aid treatment to injured victims before taking
them to the hospital.
Street urchins
under the guise of assisting in rescue operations went on looting spree, carting
away belongings of scared residents.
 This
incident would be the fifth major pipeline explosion in Lagos alone in the last
two years.
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 off 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.
Nigeria derives
more than 95 percent of its foreign exchange earnings from oil.
Rescuers began
leaving the scene of the latest disaster as darkness set in, said Abdulsalam
Mohammed, a spokesman for Nigeria's national emergency agency.
"The fire has
drastically reduced. We shall continue work tomorrow (Friday). We will also
discuss (how) to improve on our level of preparedness against future
occurrence," he said.
Firefighters from
the Nigerian Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), the fire service, construction
firm Julius Berger and the NNPC fought the blaze, he said.
Lagos police
spokesman Frank Mba said the rescue work continued and it was too early to
provide casualty figures.
Lagos MP, Adeola
Olamilekan, who was at the scene of the disaster, thanked firefighters for their
efforts to put out the fire.
At least 45 people
were killed in Lagos last December when the fuel they were siphoning from a
buried pipeline caught fire. In December 2006, another pipeline ruptured by
thieves caught fire, killing about 260. In May of that year, 150 died in
pipeline explosion east of Lagos, and another such fire in 1998 killed 1,500 in
southern Nigeria.
The vast majority
of Nigeria’s 130 million people live on less than $2 a day.
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