27th January 2025, NewsOrient, Opinion, Column, News
By Emeka Alex Duru
(08054103327, nwaukpala@yahoo.com)

A particular point by the Managing Director/Editor-In-Chief, of The Sun Newspapers, Onuoha Ukeh, at 2025 edition of the company’s annual Thanksgiving Service that caught my attention, was his advice to the members of staff to thank God for everything in their life, especially for being alive to be part of the ceremony. I cannot state the magnitude of weight the MD attached to that comment but it certainly hit me hard.

You can only appreciate what it currently means to see the next day in the country, if you consider the rate at which Nigerians are dying, often of avoidable circumstances. At every point in time, death seems to have become a sentinel hovering around every one of us, not necessarily on account of individual carelessness or suicidal dispositions but rather on issues that ordinarily should not matter. It is either a case of motor accidents sending Nigerians to early graves, petty criminals snuffing life out of innocent citizens, terrorists and insurgents holding the nation to ransom or hunger driving the citizens to unimaginable limits.

When flustered commentators note that the country has drifted to the axiomatic Hobbesian state of nature where “man’s life was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”, it is not intended to mock the leadership of the day. It is rather to put events in proper perspective. Otherwise, how can one explain a situation where Nigeria, a state that is not at war, increasingly losing its nationals over basic issues of hunger? Look at the number of people killed in the recent petrol tanker incident in Niger state. By last Monday, the Director-General, Niger State Emergency Management Agency, NSEMA, Abdullahi Baba-Arah, had confirmed that the death toll from the mishap had risen to 96, with 69 persons injured and 20 shops burnt. 80 of the victims had earlier been given mass burial.

One of the accounts of what happened claimed that a petrol-laden tanker detached from its head and fell near Sabon Kasuwa community along Dikko Junction, warranting the driver to transfer the petrol to another tanker using a pumping machine. As the fuel was being transferred, people kept coming from surrounding communities with buckets. In the process, an explosion occurred. Another version claimed that a fallen tanker spilled its contents, causing people to rush to scoop the fuel at the scene. Most of the victims were burnt beyond recognition.

This would be the second time in four months of such ugly scenario in Niger. Four months ago, 48 persons were killed in similar accident in Agaie Local Government Area of the State. Over 50 cattle, two other vehicles, were also burnt. The incident occurred when a petrol tanker loaded with PMS collided with a trailer truck loaded with travellers and cattle from Wudil in Kano State heading to Lagos.

In November 2024, an investigation panel set up by the Jigawa state government, confirmed that 209 lives were lost, while 99 others sustained injuries in fuel tanker explosion that occurred on October 14 in Majiya town, of the State. A tanker transporting petrol from Kano to Yobe overturned near Majiya village, Taura Local Government Area, causing fuel to spill into a drainage. As villagers attempted to scoop the fuel, fire broke out, leading to a massive explosion that engulfed the area, killing several people on the spot.

While some of the compatriots died in inferno, others were lost to stampedes at food distribution centres in Ibadan, Oyo state, Okija, Anambra State and Abuja, between December 18 and 21, 2024. Reports put the toll at 67 (35 in Ibadan, 10 in Abuja and 22 in Okija). All the mishaps took similar pattern. In the struggle to get ahead and obtain the free food items distributed by organisers, the participants trampled upon one another.

You would notice ongoing efforts to hold the organisers of the food camps responsible for the accidents. The dead and injured are also being blamed for greed and impatience. It is not surprising. We operate in a system where those in authority hardly take responsibility. But truth be told, there is no how the explanation for Nigerians who perished while scooping fuel from fallen tankers or those crushed in food centre can be made without locating the blame on leadership failure in the land. Whether we accept it or not, Nigerians had not had it this bad in hunger and deprivation. When an otherwise sane adult descends to the level of scooping petrol in utter disregard to the obvious hazards, life does no longer matter to him. It can only take extreme poverty and despondency for one to take such painful and predictable path to death. In all these avoidable deaths, Nigeria is further diminished.

In my article of July 12, 2024, titled; “Inside Tinubu’s Republic of Hunger”, I made illustrations on the reality of things in the country. I reported that almost all the failed portions of internal roads in major cities, were being taken over by colony of women, at times with children, begging for money or food. In Lagos, the sordid sight was becoming the norm. But there was another disturbing dimension to the trend that involved men, gathering in clusters, brandishing banners with such inscriptions, as “Ebin pa wa”, which according to a friend with better understanding of Yoruba language, translates to “we are very hungry”.

“In the East, at motor parks, presence of various bands of beggars is becoming ubiquitous. Such scenarios hardly existed in the southern parts of the country, before now. But as it is, no section is spared the embarrassment. The out-of-school syndrome that had been associated with certain sections of the country, is spreading in all the states. Poverty and hunger have become the unifying factors among Nigerians. In any system where such is the situation, danger looms”, I had written. The situation has not changed for the better. It is rather getting worse and more worrisome. In the face of the situation, it won’t be absurd to ask; is there still governance in this part of the world? Who really will save the ordinary Nigerian?

When therefore, Aso Rock hangers-on, prance about, making claims of the economy doing well, they are not being sincere. The only way to convince the citizen, the ordinary Nigerian out there, that things are looking up, is putting in place policies and measures that will see him pick his bills, put food on the table in his family and being able to guarantee the future of his children and wards. That climate of optimism, is for now, lacking. It is a big challenge to the government of the day.

DURU is the Editor, TheNiche Newspapers, Lagos

~ NewsOrient

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