A truck carrying about 50,000 litres of petrol and travelling from Lagos, was razed by fire on Saturday in front of Ogun State Governor’s Office, Oke-Mosan, Abeokuta.
The tanker was travelling from Ijora, in Lagos State via Adatan, in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital.
Most of the petroleum products consumed in Nigeria is transported by road on rickety and ill-maintained trucks, as the oil distribution pipeline in the country hardly functions well.
Accidents, including fire outbreaks leading to loss of lives, are a common occurrence involving such these trucks.
The driver, who identified himself as Nurudeen Yusuf, told newsmen that he, alongside his two motorboys, discovered a spark from the engine, which resulted in the fire outbreak.
The leader of the Federal Fire Service at the scene, Sodiq Atanda, said it took the timely intervention of his men to put out the fire.
“If not for the proximity of our station and the timely intervention of our men, this situation would have been worse,”Atanda said.
Attanda bemoaned the fact that the truck had no fire extinguisher.
President Muhammadu Buhari on Friday asked motorists in Nigeria to pay attention to the roadworthiness of their vehicles. He spoke in a condolence message to the Catholic Church of Awgu, which owns Presentation Nursery and Primary School, which lost many of its pupils in an accident. The accident happened when a truck failed brake and rammed into the school bus conveying the pupils and their teachers.