300 people died from petrol tanker fire incidents in four months – FG

About 300 lives were lost in petrol tanker fire incidents across the country between October 2024 and the last incident in Suleja in January, 2025.

Consequently, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has directed the National Orientation Agency (NOA), to step up its campaign to ensure that Nigerians are better educated about the danger of scooping fuel from oil-laden tankers.

Minister of Information and National Orientation, Muhammed Idris, who disclosed this in Abuja, lamented that apart from scooping fuel from fallen petrol tankers, some Nigerians are storing explosives in their houses, which they use mostly during illegal mining activities.

Idris decried the recent incident in a local community in Niger State where some explosives kept in a house for illegal mining went off, killing a few people and damaging over 35 houses.

“When you look at what has happened recently, when there is an accident, it causes some Nigerians, especially young ones, to rush to the site, and in the process, they get harmed. A tragic event that we have seen in Suleja last month, and what we have seen in the previous year, around Ibadan and in Jigawa, has claimed too many lives,” he said.

“We have seen that these are man-made disasters and unless an advocacy campaign is instituted to ensure that Nigerians are better informed about those dangers, we will continue to have these man-made disasters that are quite unavoidable. Infrastructure.”

The minister recalled that Tinubu in his speech on the 1st of January, had promised to unveil the National Values Charter for the benefit of all Nigerians.

He observed that it is not just enough to build roads, to construct schools, to equip hospitals, and provide other services that are necessary for the economy, stressing that there is also need to invest and pay attention to national values.