A review of current safety regulations is being considered by the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority in an attempt to prevent a recurrence of the Niger Tanker disaster, which killed 86 people and injured 55 more.
Farouk Ahmed, the regulatory agency’s Authority Chief Executive, made this statement while visiting the tanker explosion site on Sunday.
In order to prevent accidents that could result in the loss of life and property, Farouk warned Nigerians against hurrying to the site of tanker events. He also offered the condolences of the authorities to the relatives of the deceased and the Niger State government.
Ahmed was represented by Mustapha Lamorde, the organization’s Executive Director of Health, Safety, Environment, and Community.
Ahmed said, “There are already standard operating procedures and guidelines that should be followed in the sector, but those rules may need to be given a second look.” He wished the injured people a speedy recovery.
While acknowledging that the industry had standard operating standards and rules, Ahmed said he hoped the injured will recover quickly and that they might need to be reexamined.
“I believe that awareness is the most crucial factor,” he stated. People should be aware of the risks this presents, particularly in the event of an accident such as that. They should also be aware of the dangers of explosions. When incidents like this occur, we must raise public awareness to encourage people to stay away from the area.
We have rules and standard operating procedures as well. In the industry, safety awareness is promoted through mandatory training. Thus, in order to review it, we will work with important stakeholders.
“The Nigerian Association of Road Transport Owners, NUPENG, IPMAN, Petroleum Tanker Drivers, Federal Road Safety Corps, and other important stakeholders are present to ensure that we raise public awareness and work together to prevent this from happening again,” he said.
He also emphasized that in order to decide on steps to stop similar mishaps in the future, a thorough report on the event is required.
He went on to say, “From what we understand, there was an accident, and from the accident, there was a spill, and people were scooping fuel, and this led to the incident that caused many lives to be lost yesterday (Saturday).”
Despite the government’s efforts to raise awareness, Yusuf Othman, the National President of NARTO, stated in his remarks that accidents were typically caused by environmental, mechanical, and human factors.
In an area where there are a lot of petroleum-related operations, however, I will suggest that we raise awareness through the conventional institutions. The heads of the villages and the religious authorities ought to be involved in raising awareness.
I also wish to suggest that the Niger State government set up a fire station here. An arrest would have been made in this occurrence if there had been a fire station nearby. The huge volume of transportation activity occurring here is the reason behind this. Because everyone knows that in this country, trucks are used to transport all petroleum products.
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“Therefore, in an area like this where there is a lot of trucking activity, I will recommend that awareness be increased through the traditional institutions,” he continued.
Othman, who was represented by Aloga Ogbogo, the Executive Secretary of NARTO, emphasized that everything should be done to guarantee that such incidents are reduced to the bare minimum and that now was not the time to assign blame because the country was already in mourning.
The group had previously written to the government about the poor condition of the roads, Malut Abubakar, the Deputy National Chairman, also recalled.
Therefore, the government should step in and provide a really good road as our first issue. Had it not been for the road conditions, this incident would not have occurred. We wrote to the Kaduna State administration to request that they call the road contractors to the Kaduna Bypass since that was how we did it the previous time we were in Kaduna.
Additionally, the government stepped in by requesting that the contractors come level the area after numerous incidents occurred there. They accomplished it, too,” he said.
Some of the injured were reportedly rushed when the team visited Yar’Adua Memorial Hospital as well. Dr. Musa Lafaruwa, Head of Hospital Services, provided an update on the condition of the injured at the hospital.
