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Avoidable deaths

With our decrepit roads and poor traffic ethic, vehicles are prone to accidents. And avoidable deaths are bound to occur.

Tankers, laden with either diesel or petrol, are even more susceptible to accidents. Often, the tankers ply long stretches from the depots where they load to far-flung destinations where they discharge their flammable contents.

Sometimes, the drivers themselves, on account of the long distances they cover, are tired and do not get adequate sleep. Consequently, they lose concentration and they either crash or overturn.

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When accidents involving tankers carrying fuel occur, their contents spill or gush out. Impoverished citizens see this as a golden opportunity. They go on a scooping binge. In their frenzy, they are always unmindful of how highly flammable petrol is, and that the act of scooping itself can ignite a combustion. In the process, hundreds are incinerated. Those who are lucky to survive the conflagration become ghoulish and frightful sights.

September 2024 to January 2025, four such sad incidents have occurred in Oyo, Jigawa and Niger states. These incidents, two of which took place in Niger State, resulted in not less than 265 deaths.

These deaths are shocking and painful. This is because of their suddenness and the fact that they are avoidable. Above all, they portray us in bad light: They give us away as a country where life is cheap and that it counts for nothing.

In the immediate aftermath of the last such incident, which occurred at Diko, Suleja, in Niger State, on Saturday, January 18, 2025, in which not less than 96 people perished. President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu while mourning their deaths, directed the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) to implement measures to avert similar incidents. He also directed the National Orientation Agency (NOA) to initiate a nationwide campaign to raise public awareness about the risks and environmental dangers of scooping fuel from upturned tankers.

The president’s interventions are timely and compassionate. However, they seldom address the situation other than going through the motions and fulfilling all righteousness. They are nearly akin, and tangentially close, to the cynical view which tends to cast the victims of these explosions as greedy booty takers; as people who place scant value on their lives; and people who got their comeuppance.

Whereas it is important to enlighten Nigerians and to underscore for them the fatal possibilities of scooping fuel in the aftermath of tanker accidents, such a campaign must not gloss over the causative factors which spur indigent Nigerians to partake in it.

It is a fact that Nigerians deal with, and interact with, petrol on a daily basis. They use it to fire their generators, in the event of electricity outages, in their homes, in their offices and in their businesses. It is therefore difficult to advance or sustain the argument that Nigerians who die in the course of scooping fuel, do so merely on account of ignorance.

Driven by grinding poverty, people are pushed to make a buck in order to survive. This determination, occasioned by our cost of living crisis, has assumed a frightening proportion. This in turn has led to a desperation, the like of which we have not seen before now. This explains why each time there is fuel scarcity, real or contrived, there is also a profusion of black market spots where petrol is sold.

Also, the alacrity with which Nigerians migrate from other less lucrative trades to vending black market fuel has increased. This migration has grown exponentially with the withdrawal of fuel subsidy and the corresponding increase in the pump price of petrol.

In fact, since the withdrawal of fuel subsidy, each time there is fuel scarcity, female vendors, in droves, abandon the fruits which they hitherto sold in favour of hawking petrol by the roadside. In doing this, they do not mind the risks. Some are reported to store such petrol in their bedrooms! This is because returns are higher on vending petrol. What is more, these profits are most likely to address their bread and butter concerns, even if in the interim or so long as the fuel scarcity lasts.

What should not be lost on us is the correlation between the withdrawal of fuel subsidy and the increase in incidents of deaths occasioned by the scooping of fuel. In five months alone, we have had four such incidents.

To avert future tanker explosions, caused by scooping of fuel, in the short term, the FRSC should engage with the tanker drivers and their owners. They should impress on them the need to scrupulously observe traffic rules. Those of them plying long distances should be encouraged to take breaks on their routes. If possible, tankers plying long distances should be manned by two licensed drivers who can then take turns.

Working with other security agencies, the surroundings of an overturned tanker laden with fuel should be immediately cordoned by the FRSC. That way, desperate persons will not access the spilt fuel, not to talk of scooping it and in the process igniting a combustion which may eventually consume them.

In the long term, we have to go back to loading our fuel depots, strewn across the country, through pipelines. A recourse to sending petrol via pipelines to the depots will drastically reduce the long distances plied or covered by these tanker drivers. It will reduce accidents as well as reduce the wear and tear on the tankers and our roads.

Most importantly, the government must address the poverty gnawing at Nigerians and which is driving them to despair and desperation. It used to be said that a drowning man will grasp at anything, including a straw. Our poverty is broad and overwhelming. And a man who is overwhelmed by poverty does not care a hoot. He will dare death itself by scooping fuel and selling it in order to survive. This is what is driving these unfortunate deaths: the desperation to survive in the face of untold privation and destitution.

This is the sad pass we have arrived at. Its ravages cannot be mitigated or ameliorated by charging all manner of tariffs to a people already overburdened and materially challenged. Neither can the growth we seek be created or substituted by massive and continuous borrowing.

We should rather focus our energies on creating an environment for the manufacturing sector to thrive and for the millions of our youths to give robust expression to their talents. This is how to create jobs. And this is how to fight poverty which menaces us.

 

Dazang is a former director at the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)

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