20th October 2023
By Gbenga Oloniniran
The Lagos State sectors of the fire service and the Federal Road Safety Corps have begun engaging stakeholders and drivers within the petroleum industry over the recent trend of Tanker explosions and spillage on the roads.
PUNCH Metro reports that at least three cases of tanker accidents were recorded in Lagos State last week while another fuel tanker caught fire around the Olowotedo section of the Lagos Ibadan-Expressway on Wednesday.
The spokesperson for the FRSC, Ogun State sector, Florence Okpe, said three persons were involved in the Wednesday crash and sustained “minor injuries”, adding that “of the two tankers, one of them lost control due to speeding.”
While officials of the Lagos State Traffic Management Agency averted another fire accident on Thursday due to a diesel tanker crash at Obadeyi before Ijaye, along the Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway, a petrol-laden tanker exploded at the Iganmu Bridge last Thursday burning other vehicles.
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The director of the Lagos State Fire and Rescue Service, Adeseye Margaret, in a statement, said the fire damaged 11 vehicles.
Speaking on the trend, the spokesperson for the state fire service, Amodu Shakiru, in an interview with PUNCH Metro on Wednesday, wondered why vehicle owners were not ensuring the standard condition of the tankers and hiring competent drivers, despite conveying products worth millions of naira.
“The vehicle you want to place on the road must be fit for purpose. These tankers and trailers are travelling far and wide from their bases and terminals in Lagos. They travel far and wide up to the North. We’ve been engaging their various unions, the Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers and the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, and especially the Petroleum Tanker Drivers Association; we have always been engaging them,” Shakiru said.
On his part, the Sector Commander, FRSC, Lagos, Babatunde Farinloye, said the command records in the last six months revealed “less than two incidents per month. Unfortunately, we witnessed an unusual trend of three cases last week after a long while.”
He said the FRSC considers petroleum tanker trucks on the roads as a safety-critical operation and “to that extent, we have continued to build interventions around the special class of road users to mitigate the risk level.
“On August 30, the command held an engagement session with stakeholders in the petroleum haulage and came up with about 20 actionable resolutions.
“There are also issues of unsafe road sharing from other road users and post-loading unsafe conduct by the drivers like fatigue, drunk-driving, inappropriate speeding, etc. We also appeal to road users driving other categories of vehicles to desist from making dangerous manoeuvres around tanker trucks as the dynamics of trucks in moving are different. Braking, stopping and swerving are much more difficult.”
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