PAGE 2
PEOPLES DAILY WEEKEND SATURDAY 15 — SUNDAY 16, SEPTEMBER, 2012
Feature
How man died in tanker inferno trying to save children By Stanley Onyekwere
I
t happened in Maje, near Suleja on the outskirts of Abuja. A petro tanker fell and exploded, killing three people including a mother of two and destroying properties worth millions of naira. One Abdullahi Rabo was among the victims of the incident. He lost his life in the inferno while assisting in the evacuation of school children who would have also been victims of the inferno. The children numbering about a hundred were studying in an Islamic school, Madarasatul Nurul A Mahadi. The school premises were adjacent to the scene of the incident and something had to be done quickly to save the children. Rabo participated actively in the rescue efforts but didn’t live to narrate the story. The incident which occurred at about 7:00 o’clock in the morning on the fateful day, also killed a mother, whose name was given as Halimatu Sadiah and an unidentified man believed to have travelled with the driver of the ill-fated truck. Rabo, a father of five, was the first to alert the school authority about the danger from the ill-fated truck, while also volunteering to help in evacuating the children away from danger. We gathered from eyewitness account that Late Rabo met his death after he got soaked with the dispatched fuel from the tanker and got burnt at. Due to the sacrifice of Rabo, only one student sustained injury from the disaster. “Late Rabo died in the inferno after alerting us of the incident. He was at the point of helping out to evacuate the students who were inside the school when the fire caught him, he cried for help as he made frantic attempt to put off the fire, but we were unable to rescue him from the hands of the flaming force of the fire; so he died in the process,” a teacher in the school, Abubakar Tahiru said. Tahiru said late Rabo was the secretary of the Vigilante group of the community. He had four of his children in the school at the time the incident occurred. When Peoples Daily Weekend visited the scene, it observed that the school building had become desolate due to the incident. Meanwhile, the deceased woman, Sadiah, 24, was in the area to mourn the death of her late uncle who died in an accident during the month of Ramadan when she met her death. She had rushed to the scene in an attempt to rescue her daughter, who was in the school. On getting there, she couldn’t see her child, she began to search around the area, and in the process fell and got herself soaked with petroleum and consequently, fire. Later, her lifeless body was found in front of the school minutes after the fire had gone down. According to Ahmed Musa, a black smith and an elder brother to the late Sadiah, she left behind three children and a husband. Peoples Daily Weekend gathered that the most likely cause of the accident was brake failure. The driver was believed to have lost control of the truck and moved from one end of the road to another before crashing in front of the school. The affected persons who are majorly traders and artisans, bemoaned the incident, saying it affected their businesses seriously.
Alhaji Danhiru Lada, showing our reporter the most affected his damaged building, which he used for teaching and residential purposes. According to Alhaji Danhiru Lada, who owns the building that houses the Islamic school, including a couple of adjoining shops destroyed in the inferno, the damage done to the victims cannot be quantified in monetary terms as the school lost everything. Narrating his ordeal, Joshua Ayo, an electronics trader, said he lost cash sum of N143, 000 and goods worth over N750, 000, inside his shop; and after the incident, he has been rendered jobless. Another victim, Hakim oladapo, a barber, said he was away in the mosque when the incident happened only to return to meet the wreckage of the ill-fated tanker in front of his shop. In his words: ‘I lost everything in the
inferno including my musical equipment. I was not opportune to pick anything from the shop; and since the incident happened, I have nothing to do and I have my wife and kids including extended family members to cater for.” Also, lamenting her ordeal, Amina Abdulrahman, a food vendor, said when she noticed the truck fell and started discharging its contents, she ran inside the building to join in rescuing the school kids. Unfortunately, she returned to meet her restaurant razed down by the inferno. According to Tahiru, who doubles as a blacksmith and Islamic teacher, the incident is really affecting their economic life negatively, as prior to the incident they were working and receiving four thousand
naira on a daily basis but when the incident occurred, they spent about five days without working. He continued: “Also my room attached to the school was razed down with everything inside including my academic documents and savings, and now I’m forced to depend on others for assistance from the day I lost my only source of income.” Corroborating the accounts of other victims, Yahaya Aliyu, a blacksmith, lamented that after the incident, business activities in the affected area has been brought to a stop; saying up till now they are yet to receive any compensation from any quarters. Some people believed that the tanker is owned by Conoil as it had it the company’s name written on it.
One of the victims, Abubakar Tahiru, a teacher, pictured pointing at the only remaining part of the Islamic school building affected by the inferno.