Ondo explosion: Residents call for assistance

Saturday March 28, 2020 is a day residents of Eleyewo, Ilu- Abo area, along the Akure-Owo expressway in Ondo State will not forget in a hurry. For Prophetess Adesida, the owner of Possibility Prayer Mountain of God located in the area, the day started like any other day, until midnight when she decided to pray […]

Saturday March 28, 2020 is a day residents of Eleyewo, Ilu- Abo area, along the Akure-Owo expressway in Ondo State will not forget in a hurry.

For Prophetess Adesida, the owner of Possibility Prayer Mountain of God located in the area, the day started like any other day, until midnight when she decided to pray alongside a few members that were with her.

Suddenly, Adesida narrated, she heard a deafening noise and the ceiling came crumbling down. “I started shouting in prayer, saying, ‘Holy Spirit bring me out, Holy Spirit bring me out’, and God answered my prayer because God brought me out and nobody died”.

Directly opposite the church lived Sylvanus Oya, a security guard. According to Oya, about 1am on that day, he saw a truck break down on the main road and three men were working on it. “They started it, but its engine later went off again. A patrol vehicle was also with them,” he said.

Just after his observation, he recalled, an explosion rocked the air. That explosion destroyed close to 100 houses, including a church, a school with boarding facilities and a fuel station.

The explosion, which some people still believe completely destroyed the truck Oya had seen some minutes earlier and split the road into two. The bang of the explosion was so loud that many residents of the different ends of Akure claimed they heard it.

The police in Ondo State, led by its Commissioner, Mr. Adie Undie, who arrived at the scene early Saturday morning, said the explosion was caused when the explosive a truck was conveying to a quarry in Edo State went off.

The vehicle was said to be conveying the explosive from Ibadan, Oyo State, but broke down in Shasha market and later at Aina Awawu, where the explosive eventually exploded.

Undie said many people were seriously injured by the explosion, though nobody has been confirmed dead.

“Some people who sustained various degrees of injuries were rushed to the State Specialist Hospital in Akure for medical treatment. Some of them are still receiving medical treatment, while others have been discharged.

The Ondo State governor, Arakunrin Oluwarotimi Akeredolu, has since ordered the scene of explosion cordoned off to allow a police bomb squad carry out investigation.

Gov Akeredolu, who was at the scene to see the damage, said security chiefs briefed him that in the early hours of Saturday March 28, a vehicle in a convoy transporting explosives to a storage facility in a neighbouring state developed a fault while in transit along the Akure-Owo road about 2km from the Akure Airport.

“Security personnel and other individuals transporting the ordinances noticed smoke from the vehicle. After many attempts to extinguish the resulting fire failed, the vehicle and its consignment ignited, causing a massive explosion that was felt in Akure and its environs,” the governor said.

Reacting to the explosion, a Yoruba socio-cultural group, Afenifere, has called for an inquiry into the incident.

In a statement signed by the spokesman for the group, Yinka Odumakin, the inquiry should be able to ascertain the identities of those transporting the ordinances, who assigned the escorting policemen and under what circumstance, and the destination of the explosive devices.

“While we wait for answers, we must express our displeasure with the rate of explosions in Yorubaland in recent times,” the group said.

Another debate is whether it was a meteorite that fell from space and landed on the road to cause such a huge damage, as one scientist claimed.

To settle that, the Inspector-General of Police, Muhammed Adamu, has set up a fact-finding committee to thoroughly look into the issue. The Deputy Inspector-General of Police (Operation), Abdulmajid Ali, was in Ondo State and at the scene to commence the investigation.

Ali was accompanied on the visit by the Director-General of the Geological Survey Agency, Nigeria, Dr Kaka Imam.

The DIG said he had taken samples of the soil and assured that the committee would come out with a credible and acceptable report.

Gov Akeredolu faulted the claim of those who said the explosion was caused by a meteorite, saying he would rather rely on the initial information he got from the Ondo State Commissioner of Police.

“I am not saying the Professor was right or wrong and I am not making any conclusion. I have been speaking with some experts and they said if we were unable to find the debris of the shattered truck within one kilometre radius from the spot of the incident, that shows the incident was not caused by explosive devices,” he said.

While investigation into the cause of the explosion continues, victims are calling for assistance.

The Proprietor of one of the schools affected by the explosion, Rowland Jayeola, said although he was happy that the students were not in school because of the government’s coronavirus directive, he called for assistance because of the level of damage to the school.

Prophetess Adesida also pleaded for assistance, saying she lost massively to the explosion.

A resident in the area, Mrs Ajayi Babalola, whose house was destroyed by the explosion, said she now squats in a family house in Akure, with her three children.