At least 20 young persons were burned to death in a conflagration that erupted while they were scooping crude oil illegally in Nigeria’s oil-rich Rivers State. Scores of critically injured were rescued and rushed to various hospitals for treatment.
The tragic incident was recorded at Omoku village in Ogba/Egebema/Ndoni county on Sunday morning (Dec. 24). The youths broke into a pipeline of a multinational oil company and were scooping the oil with buckets and fuel cans when the area suddenly went up in flames.
In August, Nigerian authorities said they had started a crackdown to put a stop to oil theft, but with little apparent success. Unemployment and poverty in the oil-producing Niger Delta has made illegal crude refining an attractive business but with deadly consequences. Crude oil is tapped from a web of pipelines owned by major oil companies and refined into products in makeshift tanks.
Read more: https://punchng.com/explosion-from-vandalised-fuel-pipeline-kills-20-in-rivers/
—Ezinwanne Onwuka reports for TruthNigeria from Abuja.
