The Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) has blamed stakeholders for the tanker explosions that have been claiming lives since 2015.
The Corps Marshal, FRSC, Shehu Mohammed, said this in a press briefing following three tanker explosions in Nigeria in the space of days, leading to the loss of hundreds of lives and property.
Mohammed recalled the October 2014 Molete tanker incident in Ibadan, Oyo State, which claimed several lives and valuable property.
The corps marshal said following the incident, a national summit on the safe transportation of petroleum products was convened by the FRSC in Abuja in June 2015.
He said at the summit, identified stakeholders in petroleum transportation were given specific roles to play in preventing tanker crashes and fuel spillage.
According to him, had all the stakeholders been strictly adhering to the safety protocols as collectively agreed to at the 2015 summit, the nation could have been saved from the harrowing experiences of fallen tankers spilling fuel and attracting people who get burnt while trying to scoop fuel.
He lamented that “investigations carried out by the corps on tankers involved in the various crashes indicated that other players have not been adhering strictly to the agreed safety standards and embarking on internal compliance and enforcement mechanisms that could have guaranteed safety of the vehicles and the products to avoid situations where fallen tankers would spill fuel to attract people that rushed to scoop the products.”
Further speaking, Mohammed said, “It must however be recalled that even though tanker crashes like other road-based emergencies do happen in other places across the world and may not be possible to be completely eradicated by any nation including those with advanced technologies, what such nations have been able to do is to effectively manage cases of fuel spillage even when the tankers fall. Our cases have however been complicated by cases of tankers spilling fuel whenever they fall, thus creating attraction for people who rush to scoop the fuel, mindless of the inherent dangers in their actions.”
Source: www.mynigeria.com
