Poverty, graft a backdrop to blast that kills hundreds of Nigerians

from The Seattle Times

By KATHARINE HOURELD

LAGOS, Nigeria — A gasoline pipeline ruptured by thieves exploded into a blazing inferno Tuesday as scavengers collected the fuel in a poor neighborhood, killing at least 260 people in the latest oil-industry disaster to strike Africa's biggest petroleum producer.

Braving a towering pillar of fire and a cloud of acrid black smoke, thousands of people in Lagos' Abule Egba neighborhood surged around rescue workers carrying away bodies, checking for a glimpse of missing relatives.

Tapping is common in Nigeria, where many of the 130 million people live in woeful poverty amid widespread graft that makes a handful wealthy. A single pilfered can of gasoline sold on the black market can earn two weeks of wages for a poor Nigerian.

But tapping also brings frequent accidents. Earlier this year, 150 people died in a similar explosion in Lagos, and a 1998 pipeline fire killed 1,500 in southern Nigeria.

Tuesday's blast, the worst in years, came after thieves opened the conduit during the night but left without fully sealing it, prompting hundreds of nearby residents to rush to collect spurting gasoline with cans, buckets and even plastic bags, witnesses said.

Residents said a gang of thieves had been illegally tapping the pipeline for months, carting away gasoline in tankers for resale.

It was unclear what ignited the fuel just after dawn.

A senior official for the Nigerian Red Cross, Ige Oladimeji, said his workers counted 260 dead by nightfall and took 60 injured people to hospitals. "We are still counting [dead], but there will not be hundreds more," he said.

Bodies lay scattered around the periphery of the site. For many victims, only tiny reminders — a child's flip flop blistered by the heat, a half-melted plastic bucket — were the only identifiable items in a fused mass of remains.

"There were mothers there, little children," said Emmanuel Unokhua, an engineer who lives nearby.

"I was begging them to go back."

Unokhua said people had splashed fuel on him seeking to chase him away and also doused a few police officers who tried unsuccessfully to control the crowd.

Flames that nearly incinerated cars and melted electrical lines to pylons kept rescue workers away from much of the carnage until the fire began to wane in early afternoon.

Crowds of anguished people impeded the passage of fire crews and ambulances.

Owned by Nigeria's state-owned petroleum company, the pipeline delivers refined fuel for domestic consumption, so the blast was not expected to affect oil pumped for export.

Residents blamed greed, graft and poverty for the disaster.

"This was a preventable tragedy," said Joel Ogundere, a lawyer whose home is next to the blast.

"It was poverty, ignorance and greed."

Widespread corruption and mismanagement have left Nigeria's refineries unable to meet demand, and fuel shortages are common.

Christians heading home for Christmas and Muslims preparing for a feast day have jammed service stations for days across Lagos, a sprawling city of 13 million.

Many Nigerians feel they have gained little from decades of oil production in their country, saying natural gas flaring and oil spills have polluted lands while they remain poor and a tiny elite grows rich.

"How can this be, that people are so poor in Nigeria that they will risk their lives for a little thing," said Bode Kuforiji, a university lecturer.

"But boats leave for America every day filled with oil."

Long lines have formed at fuel stations across Nigeria over the past few weeks because of shortages in supply from the national oil company.

President Olusegun Obasanjo promised not to increase local fuel prices in 2006, after a series of increases triggered protests in 2005. But there is widespread speculation that prices will rise after the new year.

Industry experts estimate that about 5 percent of Nigerian crude oil is stolen for export by criminal syndicates with contacts in the military and government.