By Emeka Alex Duru
More than three weeks after the explosion that rocked Abule Ado, a residential area off Lagos – Badagry expressway, not much in concrete terms, is known on the cause of the blast. The Sunday, March 15 explosion which reverberated in distant parts of the state, left in its wake, 22 persons dead, many injured and more than 50 houses destroyed.
On account of the magnitude of the blast and its impacts, insinuations were high on the possible cause. Residents and sympathizers who thronged the scene of the explosion, obviously driven by the mood of the moment, blamed it on bomb and other high caliber explosives. The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), however, claimed that it was mere accident.
NNPC had claimed that the explosion was caused by a truck after it hit some gas cylinders stacked in a gas processing plant located near NNPC’s 2B pipeline right of way. The explanation, however, did not identify who drove the truck, what the truck was doing on a pipeline at that time of the day. It also did not say whether the content of the truck was weaponized. That left many gaps in the explanation. Members of the public have also made wild claims on the cause of the explosion.
In a bid to unravel the cause of the blast and disabuse the minds of the people, Lagos state government, set up an investigation panel expected to come with detailed and fool-proof explanation on what happed. But more than three weeks after the incident, no report on the incident has been released.
Efforts to get the reactions of the Chief Press Secretary to the governor, Gboyega Akosile, on the matter, did not yield results. Calls to his telephone did not go through. Also, text messages forwarded to his line, were not responded to.
The delay by the Panel in turning up its report on the actual cause of the blast, has created room for speculations by the victims and other members of the society. A relation of a couple involved in the blast who spoke to our reporter, captured the mood of others affected by the incident. “Two of the victims – actually a couple- came from the same Isuofia, Anambra state with me. I was actually the chairman of the Lagos branch of our Town Union, when they wedded in 2018. The husband was the only son of the mother. The wife, an employee of an oil company, just commenced her annual Leave the Sunday of the blast. Both were lost in the incident. I saw the mother of the young man recently. She was a pathetic sight”, lamented our source, a newspaper editor.
Like many concerned analysts, he argued that even if the cause of the blast turns out to be a case of accident, a proper and well-documented investigation by the Panel, should make recommendations to guard against recurrence. He urged the governor to ensure that the investigation does not go the way of similar ones in some parts of the country that did not see the light of the day.