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More than 150 people were killed in northern Nigeria on Tuesday after an overturned fuel tanker exploded, according to a police spokesman, in one of the deadliest road disasters ever recorded in Africa’s most populous country.
While the death toll was exceptionally high, the episode followed an all-too-common pattern on Nigeria’s roads: a truck driver lost control of a fuel tanker, and people rushed in to collect the spilled gasoline from the overturned vehicle. Shortly after, an explosion turned into a deadly inferno.
As residents in the town of Majia, where the explosion occurred, mourned their dead on Wednesday during a day of mass burials, more than 100 injured people remained hospitalized, according to the police spokesman, Lawan Shiisu.
Two emergency services officials said the preliminary death toll would probably rise.
“Multiple households have suffered devastating casualties, losing more than one family member,” said Mu’azu Rabiu, a resident of Majia who witnessed the disaster.
On Wednesday, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu said that a review of safety measures for fuel transportation nationwide would be conducted in the wake of the episode, according to a statement shared by the Nigerian presidency.
Mr. Tinubu also said that nighttime travel protocols would be intensified, the statement read.
Fuel tanker explosions make up a small portion of reported road-related deaths in Nigeria, a country of about 220 million people where more than 5,000 people died and 31,000 others were injured in traffic accidents last year, according to government data.
Poorly maintained roads, aging vehicles and loosely enforced safety regulations, like a lack of adherence to speed limits, are among the main causes.
But fuel tanker explosions kill bystanders and pedestrians, while injuring others with severe burns.
In early September, at least 59 people died when a passenger truck and two other vehicles hit a toppled-over fuel tanker that had caught fire. In April, more than 100 vehicles burned in a similar explosion. And in July last year, at least eight people died as they were trying to siphon fuel from an overturned truck in the country’s southwest.
The disaster on Tuesday night was set off when the driver of a fuel tanker swerved to avoid colliding with a truck on an expressway in the northern state of Jigawa, according to Mr. Shiisu, the police spokesman.
The tanker overturned near Majia, spilling fuel onto the roadway. Local residents rushed to scoop it up in what seemed like an easy way to collect an increasingly expensive commodity in Nigeria.
Fuel prices have more than tripled over the last year as Mr. Tinubu’s administration has moved to abandon a costly government fuel subsidy that for decades gave Nigerians access to some of the cheapest gasoline in Africa.
Higher fuel prices have been a key factor behind nationwide protests over the rising cost of living that have embroiled Nigeria for months.
On Tuesday, despite police warnings and attempts to cordon off the area around the overturned tanker, many people gathered to collect the spilled fuel in the dark, according to Mr. Shiisu.
“The tanker, loaded with petrol, ignited shortly after the crash, causing an inferno that engulfed numerous people in the vicinity,” Mr. Shiisu said.
Videos shared by Nigerian news outlets showed a truck engulfed in flames and a trail of fire along the road.
According to a World Health Organization report published this year, sub-Saharan African countries accounted for nearly 20 percent of road fatalities globally in 2021, even though they hold only 3 percent of the world’s vehicles.
Last month, the Nigerian government introduced a mobile app designed to prevent road accidents in the country. The fuel tanker explosion on Tuesday was at least the second road accident to cause dozens of deaths since then.
Ismail Alfa contributed reporting from Maiduguri, Nigeria.
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