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A disagreement has emerged over the number of people killed in a pipeline incident in Nigeria’s oil-producing Niger Delta, with a local NGO reporting 37 deaths while security forces and the company involved gave conflicting accounts.
The Youths and Environmental Advocacy Centre said 37 people died early Thursday in the Okrika Local Government Area after inhaling fuel fumes during a theft from a pipeline.
But the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, responsible for guarding pipelines in the region, said only four bodies had been recovered.
“The initial casualty figures circulating in the aftermath of the incident were not fully verified and may have been overstated,” the force’s command for Rivers State said in a statement, adding it was still investigating.
Indorama, the company targeted, rejected the NGO’s report.
Fidelis Omunakwe Akandu, coordinator of pipeline surveillance at the firm, said in a statement the claims were “blatant lies”, adding, “No such incident occurred within the facility or along the pipeline corridor.”
YEAC-Nigeria fired back, saying it had pictures and videos to back its claim.
Indorama “lied that there was no such incident and no casualties”, the NGO’s executive director, Fyneface Dumnamene, told AFP.
The area around the pipeline was closed to the public Friday, with a large security deployment blocking the media from accessing it, an AFP journalist said.
Residents said the victims whose bodies were found had not been stealing fuel.
“They inhaled something after an explosion,” one local told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Arabibia Minanyo, a vendor in her early 40s, said her husband had been killed in the incident.
“Foam was coming out of his mouth and nose. They told us he inhaled gas,” she said.
The oil-rich Niger Delta is a restive region, home to a multi-billion-dollar industry but also deep poverty.
