Another day, another fuel tanker explosion in Nigeria. The opening month of the year is only just hurtling to a close, but already Nigeria is harvesting death in numbers.
Niger State is in the news, yet again. A nightmare state. On Friday, January 17, 2025 a tanker exploded in Suleja, killing more than eighty persons including a pregnant woman and leaving dozens injured. The incident has expectedly thrown the country into mourning. It was never the news anyone bargained for to start the year and if this is a sign of things to come, it means Nigeria is signing on for a very long year indeed.
This accident which has thrown families into mourning in the morning of a new year is far from isolated. In fact, if anything, it is history rekindling its flames and burning all in its way with ferocious fury.
Niger State recorded a boat mishap in 2024 that drowned more than fifty passengers. Shortly after that, the country was shaken by the fuel tanker explosion which killed well over one hundred persons in Majiya, Jigawa State. To demonstrate that even tragedy fails to dish enough deterrent to those being scouted by death, a few days after the tragedy in Majiya, some Nigerians descended on a fallen fuel tanker in Akamkpa Cross Rivers State, regurgitating the excuses and repeating the exercises that had yielded such fatalities only a few days prior.
In the face of these devastating accidents, who is failing to learn lessons? Nigeria or Nigerians?
One only needs to look at the environmental genocide in the Niger-Delta to conclude that the discovery of oil has not exactly been the blessing prophesied when the sleepy soil of Oloibiri, Bayelsa State, yielded the first squirt of the black gold in 1956. The slow erosion of Nigerian institutions and entrenchment of corruption and complacency vociferously argue against the canonization of oil as Nigeria’s saving grace.
The frequency of these accidents simply shows that Nigeria is not a serious country. Of course, it is entirely in the character of a country with a chillingly low quality of life and even lower life expectancy to be careless with the lives of those living in it.
When these heavy-duty fuel tankers filled with fuel hit the road, what safety measures were taken? What safety protocols are observed to ensure that they are kept safe for themselves and others? The frequency with which they occur and the dizzying speed with which Nigeria moves on from them to await the next accident shows that not enough is being done.
On their part, Nigerians are not doing enough to stay safe and alive in a country where death is never far away. Survival is an instinct as primal as it is wild. But of what use are the risks taken to survive if death mops everything up in the blink of an eye.
Those Nigerians who wield poverty like a shield rather than a sword justify the needless, reckless risks they take. The result of such senseless carelessness is a death by the number.
Nigeria should be thoroughly tired of these tragedies by now. It should be seen to be doing all it can to stop these needless deaths. Africa’s largest democracy and economy deserves to be posting progress and not post-mortem reports of avoidable deaths so early in the year and every month of the year.
Ike Willie-Nwobu,
Ikewilly9@gmail.com
