Nigerians Search For Missing After Blast

Gasoline Explosion At Vandalized Pipeline Kills 265; Many Already Buried

(CBS/AP)  Nigerians clutching photos of relatives missing after a Lagos pipeline fire crowded around a survivors' tracking center on Wednesday, hoping loved ones were among those who escaped an inferno that killed 265 people.

Olaniyi Adebayo, who had carefully cut out his 15-year-old daughter Adebola from a picture of her two sisters, handed her image to Red Cross rescue workers.

The workers were helping to reunite reconnect families after an inferno swept through scavengers collecting fuel Tuesday from a vandalized gasoline pipeline in Lagos' Abule Egba neighborhood. The Red Cross said 265 people died in the blaze.

"It is not all who are dead, some are in hospitals and we don't know where" said Adebaya, a 46-year-old transport worker, who had already toured other health clinics, unsuccessfully seeking Adebola. "My wife is at home crying ... we just had Christmas together. Adebola was going to join the church choir."

Like many gathered at the Red Cross stall, Adebayo insists his daughter would only have been watching the commotion, rather than scooping up fuel. The Red Cross said at least 60 survivors had been documented, but the number of injuries was surely higher.

One woman, who declined to give her name, said many survivors feared arrest as thieves and were afraid to report to health authorities. Others may not have gone to a hospital because they lack money to pay for treatment, reports the BBC.

Pipeline tapping is common in Nigeria, where most of the country's 130 million people live in poverty despite their country's role as Africa's leading crude producer.

Inefficiency and massive corruption mean petrol queues are often hours long, while a small jerrycan of black-market fuel fetches up to two weeks' wages for the average Nigerian. On the day of the fire, gas-station lines stretching hundreds of yards wound around Lagos blocks, with drivers jockeying for position.

Oluwunmi Olalekan, a 25-year-old student, said that state-supplied electricity was so unreliable in their part of town it was impossible to run the family business, an electronic games center, without gasoline for the generator.

Her 27-year-old brother, Olaniyan, had taken their 15-year-old brother, Deji, to the filling station to seek fuel, she said.

"Then one of his friends called him to say there was fuel here instead of standing in the line at the petrol station," she said in front of the charred ground.

She has not seen either brother since. Both siblings' names were carefully written out in an exercise book by a volunteer, logged as lost.

Many of the bodies were burnt beyond recognition, the BBC reported.

Most of the victims, who came armed with plastic buckets, bags and even pots and pans, have already been hastily buried in a mass grave to prevent an outbreak of cholera, which periodically sweeps through Nigerian slums.

Local priests and imams were invited to recite prayers for the deceased but no family members were present.

Nigerian Red Cross official Ige Oladimeji said that 265 bodies were buried, although fragments remained at the site. As condolences from United Nations head Kofi Annan and Pope Benedict XVI poured in, workers fumigated the area, picking up a human hand or piece of skull that had been overlooked.

Residents said a gang of professional thieves had been illegally tapping the pipe for months, carting away gasoline in tankers for resale. Two tankers had been seen hours before the pipeline exploded, they said. The cause of the flames wasn't known.

During a visit, the head of the Nigerian police, Sunday Ehindero, said that he planned to set up a special cross-agency taskforce to deal with pipeline vandalization and crack down on black market fuel sellers.

Earlier this year, 150 people died in a similar incident, and a 1998 pipeline fire killed 1,500. Many Nigerians feel they have gained little from decades of oil production in their country, saying gas flaring and oil spills have polluted lands while they remain poor as only a tiny elite grows rich.

Subsidized fuel prices are one of the few government-provided benefits, many say, but the low prices encouraged widespread smuggling to neighboring countries, exacerbating shortages and driving up black market prices.

The government has slashed subsidies in recent years, provoking several riots. But many distributors hoard supplies over the holidays, reselling it on the black market amid artificial scarcity to boost profits.

[petesis]

That is alot of people burned up. For some gallons of fuel? Poverty is expensive.

[nothappyatall]

How can this be, that people are so poor in Nigeria that they will risk their lives for a little thing," said Bode Kuforiji, a 28-year-old university lecturer. "But boats leave for America everyday filled with oil."

Boats leave full of oil we PAID their country for, seems to me they should be blaming THEIR corrupt government and fix it i nstead of blaming US for their problems;

"Massive corruption and mismanagement has left the country's refineries unable to meet demand and fuel shortages are common."

Of course the CHRISTIANS have added to this by creating fuel shortages there;

"Christians heading home for Christmas,

have jammed filling stations for days across Lagos, a massive city of 13 million people. "

[xgfan4]

gas flaring and oil spills have polluted lands while they remain poor as only a tiny elite grows rich.
i think the socall "elite" are supposed to consider the local's situation and give a reciprocity plan to resolve these problems.
the government should do something,
like imposing a law to reduce the death toll to zero.

[dmspe]

Newster1 got it part right. Blame it on Nigeria's gov't and their oil industry. Heaven forbid they would try to protect their people and take some margins off what's going in their pockets. Americans shelled out over 20 billion dollars to Nigeria last year. USA imports about 40% of Nigeria's crude. The majority goes elswhere. If you drive autos, use plastics, heat with fuel oil, etc, etc, don't get self-righteous. You're part of the problem, too. And when the oil consuming US finally kicks the oil habit, those oil exporters will cry because they squandered their present fortunes. And they'll blame that on America, too.

[patrick462]

And the US is responsible for the Nigerian government *** over its own people? But this is what this article strongly implies. CBS News should get a life and quit blaming America for the World's corruption. This is but one of the many reasons why many people in the US avoid network news like the plague.

[netfa-2009]

If Nigeria, who have been exploited by the West for centuries, tried to do what Mr Chavez is doing with the oil in his country, they would be labeled as enemies of the US, aid would be curtailed, and the people would suffer even more. The answer lies in an equitable distribution of wealth, or a revolution WILL level the playing field.

[alphaa10-2009]

Nigeria is the familiar, third-world mix of extreme poverty, juxtaposed with a relatively well-off elite and an infrastructure-- if you might call it that-- to keep the rabble at bay. Crowning this pyramid of privilege are BP and other global petrochemicals, struggling to maintain and enlarge access to Nigerian production.

For now, Nigeria is a money machine for Western producers, but driven by oil reserves Nigerians popularly believe are being stolen from them-- simply because they see no dividend at their level. Despite the vast wealth changing hands, most Nigerians see none of it.

Nowhere is there a sense of popular democracy, the rule of law or an expression of the will of most of the nation's 130 million. The smell of money has driven influential parties to ignore festering unrest that promises more civil strife-- or revolution. Nigeria's fragile democracy is set for another election in early 2007, but the prognosis for improvement is poor.

Nigerians expected much better after Obasanjo was elected, with some 84 percent in a 2000 poll happy with their new democracy-- contrasted to only 25 percent, today. Entrenched and widespread corruption has become a way of life at every level that simple greed and/or despair blinds most with the power to reform. Nigeria is a ticking time bomb, as internationals and the power elite continue to ignore the very people who one day will turn against them.

[alphaa10-2009]

patrick462 protested, "... CBS News should get a life and quit blaming America for the World's corruption. This is but one of the many reasons why many people in the US avoid network news like the plague...
---
Interestingly, patrick462 still finds it important enough to read, because news reminds us of matters we must deal with daily, even on a global perspective. If news annoys those who want to sleep, and angers those who want to live indifferently, news also reminds us we can and should guide our country's policy intelligently where we do have responsibility.

Taking responsibility does not necessarily mean feeling guilty about Nigerian misery. But it does involve leaving behind armchair isolationism and waking up to the fact the world neighborhood is in peril. We cannot build our fence high enough to ward off the future, though we spend more on military toys than the most populous dictatorship in the world (the PRC).

Blaming the messenger, or CBS, for bad news is illogic to anybody but one bent on defending the Bush record of incompetence, ignorance and criminally deceitful behavior. And how ironic those who complain about CBS international news stories are the same people claiming "We must fight global terrorism in Iraq, so terrorists won't be here." To know your enemy, it helps to know the battleground.

[p201]

One minor "inconvenient fact" seems to have eluded CBS. That is that Nigeria is a net IMPORTER of gasoline from Europe. It isn't the evil US or the evil corporations who are profiting at the expense of the poor in Nigeria. It is the poor of Nigeria who are buying too much gasoline and so need to IMPORT much of it and then pipe it around their country. It is the Nigerian government which can't produce enough gasoline in government controlled refineries to meet the demand. It is the Nigerian government which has sat back and watched the same thing happen repeatedly in the past with thousands now dead and has done nothing to alleviate the problem of people stealing gasoline.

But this wouldn't be a good liberal spin on the story. CBS might incur the wrath of the Blame America First crowd if they pointed out this inconvenient fact. Therefore "But boats leave for America everyday filled with oil." True, the US DOES import crude oil from Nigeria. But no one is stealing crude oil. It would be just as relevant to say that boats leave for America everyday filled with peanuts which is equally true and equally irrelevant unless you're trying to infer that the US is the heart of evil in the world.

[melhbern]

Far be it from me to defend the Nigerian government and the other corrupt officials that are stealing the oil money and mismanaging the energy industry in the country. However, you have to put things into perspective. Nigeria is about 20% larger in area than Texas. Texas has 20 million residents. Nigeria has 130 million. If you gave every penny of oil revenue to the people, it would amount to about $1 per day per person. What they need is an honest government and investment in their country's infrastructure (such as refineries). Socialism ala Hugo Chavez will give the people a fish, no it will give them some fish bones in this case. Honest capitalism will slowly grow a thriving country.

[some_guy3]

Wait, so a rioting crowd of hundreds of people taps an oil line, steals gasoline for profit, threatens the police and an engineer who pointed out the danger (by dumping gas on them and threatening to set them on fire), and unsurprisingly, the geniuses blew themselves up.

Am I missing how this is America's fault? Guess I simply an ignorant peasant for thinking these people did this to themselves. They were warned of the danger, but instead of getting to a safe distance and taking their children with them, they allowed their greed to get the best of them, and they threatened to kill the police. Sorry if I'm not down with the pity party.

Oh, and for you communist idiots saying they "should have had a low keeping deaths to zero," I suggest you read the article. There was a law, and the police tried to enforce it to protect these people. Instead, they rioted, overpowered the police, and blew themselves to kingdom come.

[yossarian64]

Nigeria has been attempting to establish a democracy for many years, but it's to the the United State's advantage to have the country in chaos and under various dictatorial governments that cut deals to stay in power in exchange for sweet fuel arrangements.

It's a very old and common story, but this is the result. And yes, in a very large way it's our fault.

http://www.factivism.com

[hearhere-2009]

To address many of the posts here, many complaining about the article and a few complaing about the complainers I had to comment. It's not America's fault that poor people engaged in criminal behaviour resulting in many horrific deaths. They saw an opportunity and took it in the same way that many people would steal the money from a crashed armored car. Ever hear of the Nigerian Email Scam? Is that America's fault too? Just because you are poor doesn't justify breaking the law. That's moral relativism.

The people complaining about the article are tired of the "It's America's Fault" claim for every bad thing that happens in the rest of the world. They see the inclusion of the quote by guy at the end of the article as just another example of how journalists are able to skew an innocuous story in to one that somehow casts blame on the US.

And yet now, I notice the article has changed and that quote isn't in there. Hmmm...

[hearhere-2009]

To address many of the posts here, many complaining about the article and a few complaing about the complainers I had to comment. It's not America's fault that poor people engaged in criminal behaviour resulting in many horrific deaths. They saw an opportunity and took it in the same way that many people would steal the money from a crashed armored car. Ever hear of the Nigerian Email Scam? Is that America's fault too? Just because you are poor doesn't justify breaking the law. That's moral relativism.

The people complaining about the article are tired of the "It's America's Fault" claim for every bad thing that happens in the rest of the world. They see the inclusion of the quote by guy at the end of the article as just another example of how journalists are able to skew an innocuous story in to one that somehow casts blame on the US.

And yet now, I notice the article has changed and that quote isn't in there. Hmmm...

[dmspe]

Yossarians64 said" "it's to the the United State's advantage to have the country in chaos and under various dictatorial governments...". Well if that's the case, why aren't we pushing for an unstable Canada (16% of our imports), or Mexico (12% of our imports), or Saudi Arabia (11% of our imports), or de facto dictator led-Venezuela (11% of our imports)?
Political upheaval is anathema to a reliable and stable petroleum market. Democracies or dictators just can't sell their oil for whatever they *** well please. What freakin' planet did you launch from? Get a clue!
I hate seeing 1/4 trillion dollars leaving the US every year for oil but until we get our energy sources diversified, we're stuck. And it's all Americans "fault" - including the self-righteous Yossarian64 and his ilk.

[octavianuus]

Nigeria is a largely misunderstood country internationally,as a nigerian I have had to balance western opinion and the situation on ground.The woes we have today is as a result of the british colonialists, reluctance to leave the colony in the 1950s,power was handed over to a class of individuals who had no business to rule in the british interest, and this still haunts this country like a ghost.

No western nation has worked as hard as the united states to bring peace and stability to Nigeria,we must have this in mind that as a sovereign state it is our responsibility to develop our country in 1999 Clinton said this and we must roll up our sleeve to develop our country nobody can do that for you even America has it problems.

America means well to nigeria and what we really need today is a government with a human face, we are right now in a rogue democracy i guess

[cantshutup]

Please see the movie, WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR...why are we in Iraq? why are people dying for a bucket of gas? see this movie and then what? Someone help me figure it out...