Director-General of the National Orientation Agency (NOA), Lanre Onilu, has said that the recent petrol tanker explosion in Niger State was not caused by ignorance but by the failure of community leadership and a breakdown of societal values.
Speaking on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily Programme, Onilu said the tragedy, which claimed several lives, reflected a recurring problem that awareness campaigns alone could not solve.
NewsNGR reports that the explosion, which occurred on Tuesday, in Essa community, Katcha Local Government Area of Niger State, claimed 42 lives and left more than 60 others injured.
According to the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), the tanker lost control between 11:00 a.m. and 12:00 noon along the dilapidated Bida–Badeggi–Agaie Road, overturned, and exploded shortly after.
Most of the victims were residents attempting to collect fuel from the fallen vehicle before it burst into flames.
However, grieving locals blamed the poor condition of the road where the accident took place and called on both federal and state governments to urgently rehabilitate it to prevent future disasters.
Reacting to the tragedy on Thursday , Onilu said the latest explosion mirrors a disturbing pattern that the NOA had already investigated months earlier.
He recalled that after a similar incident occurred in Dikko, also in Niger State, President Bola Tinubu gave a marching order to the agency to conduct a nationwide sensitisation campaign on the dangers of scooping fuel from accident scenes.
“We flagged the campaign off in that local government and brought stakeholders together, community leaders, religious leaders, police, civil defence, youth leaders, women, everybody.
“Our findings showed clearly that sensitisation and enlightenment alone would not solve this problem. They are quite aware of the danger of fuel scooping but still engage in the act out of greed and recklessness. ” he noted.
Onilu said the Dikko explosion could have been prevented if community leaders had supported security operatives who tried to disperse the crowd before the fire.
“The police arrived almost 20 minutes before the fire and tried to prevent the people from approaching the product. But they chased the security personnel away, and barely 10 minutes after that, the explosion occurred,” he recounted.
He described the failure of local leadership as a major cause of such tragedies.
“It was a failure of leadership at the community level because the community leaders did not provide the support that the security personnel required. If they had done that, that Dikko incident would not have happened,” he said, adding that the latest explosion in Essa likely followed the same pattern.
According to him, after the Dikko incident, the NOA engaged the Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) at its headquarters in Lagos, alongside the downstream petroleum regulatory agency, to identify high-risk routes and propose preventive measures.
He noted that the government and relevant agencies had already documented dangerous road spots and black points where fuel spills were most likely to occur. Yet, he lamented that citizens continued to ignore warnings and rush toward danger.
“We all know the bad spots. They have been defined and documented. But if there is a spillage, why do you go near it when you know the risk involved?” he asked.
He recalled similar tragedies in Nigeria’s past, including the Jesse pipeline explosion that killed over 1,000 people, saying such incidents should have served as lasting lessons.
He further stressed that while regulations and enforcement are necessary, the real solution lies in rebuilding Nigeria’s moral and communal values.
“That’s why we felt it’s not just about regulation; it’s about values in this country. It’s about values,” he said.
Urging Nigerians to take responsibility at the community level and support authorities in preventing further avoidable disasters, Onilu warned that without a shift in values and attitudes, similar tragedies would continue to claim lives.
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