Put a stop to bonfire of humans

And then not unexpectedly the whole scene goes up in a huge ball of flame, trapping hordes of humanity that had come to help themselves to the fuel and they all get consumed in one huge inferno of a bonfire of the collective unreason.  The River State episode was the latest incident of people being […]

And then not unexpectedly the whole scene goes up in a huge ball of flame, trapping hordes of humanity that had come to help themselves to the fuel and they all get consumed in one huge inferno of a bonfire of the collective unreason.  The River State episode was the latest incident of people being consumed in the fire that ensued while they scooped fuel from bust pipes or a tanker involved in accident. It has happened in Ogoni land and in the Lagos area several times.

But why do people take leave of their senses whenever there is fuel to be got for free?  Surely, they must have seen or been told of the hideous outcome of instances when people rushed to help themselves to fuel. As everyone knows in those instances those who went to scoop fuel were all roasted and burnt to crisp, quite beyond recognition. So why do they heedlessly do it? As if some malevolent agent has conspired to take away their reason.  Many people ascribe it to poverty and, to be sure, the class of people who perish in the fire would give credence to that view. They include boys and girls hawking odds and ends on the streets, eking out their daily means of livelihood, housewives who on hearing there is free fuel from a fallen tanker, strap their babies to their backs and rush to the scene with a couple jerry cans to partake in the death dealing bonanza, as it were. Apparently, almost everyone in the vicinity abandons whatever he was doing to get a piece of the action. Poverty therefore may have a lot to do with it. Still it does not explain why otherwise sane human beings, fully aware of the risk they are taking, nonetheless go ahead anyway to endanger their lives and get incinerated in the process.

Some people have also ascribed it to the lingering and brooding curse that petroleum has come to constitute to Nigeria. Elsewhere, like Norway and other Scandinavian countries, petroleum has brought immeasurable wealth that has impacted positively on the health, education and general well being of the people. Not also in Nigeria, where even though the exploitation of oil is now well into its sixth decade (ever since oil find at Oliobiri in 1957) but its impact has continued to excite mixed feelings, at best. Oil wealth has created moral and ethical morass prevailing in the country now, which have also whittled away every sense of decency and appropriate attitude and replaced them with an overweening sense of bad behavior, to put it mildly.

This untoward and odious attitude finds its anti-social expression in the deplorable leadership quality that has become second nature to Nigeria and its hallmark has been the inability to harness Nigeria’s resources to galvanise it to its destiny of greatness.  Hence, in the midst of plenty only a few get by and –boy! how they gorge themselves; the rest are left to survive any which way they can. And of course, the results are starkly staring everyone in the face, so obvious that mentioning them would be trite and almost certainly insulting. But once in a while our collective numbed sensibility is rudely woken up, as has been done by the inferno that consumed scores of people in River State, a reminder that we need to retrace out steps and do the needful things.

Why in this day and age must fuel be transported in tankers considering the terrible state of the roads?  With the roads such as they are, how far can these tankers travel before the inevitable accident occur? Up and down the country one common sight on the highways are broken down petrol tankers that have got stalled because of one mechanical problem or the other and blocking smooth flow of traffic. Moreover, these fuel tankers and other articulated trucks constitute the major reason why the roads fall frequently into disrepair. The tankers also constitute constant danger to motorists and other people wherever they choose to make their depots or stopover stations. Places like Tafa and Maraba Jos both in Kaduna state and Sagamu in Ogun State, a gruesome accident occurred in the latter, causing many loss lives.

Clearly therefore, there is a need to seriously replaced tankers as means of conveying flammable commodities like fuel, not only to ensure the roads last longer but also to limit avoidable accidents on the roads and their attendant wastage of human lives. An alternative should have been the use of the rails, but it is now that rail transportation is receiving some attention. It is hoped concerted effort would be made to see its revitalization to fruition.

The safest means to transport fuel remains through pipelines. Certainly, it cannot be that shortage of funds to erect pipelines for conveying fuel throughout the country is the problem, judging from the vast amount of money that is being frittered away through corruption in the oil sector. It must be granted though that fire also regularly occur when pipelines are vandalized by fuel thieves, but this problem can be solved by intensifying policing the pipelines through the length and breadth of the country, as is already being done in the Niger Delta creeks.  Let’s take measures to put a stop to these human bonfires by seriously addressing alternative and viable means of transporting fuel other than using the tankers.