By Jude Michael
The Anambra State Commissioner for Petrolatum and Mineral Resources, Barr Anthony Ifeanya, has advised the residents of the state to shun the attitude of scooping fuel from fallen tankers.
The Petroleum Commissioner who gave the advice while speaking in a press interview recently in his office at Jerome Udoji Secretariat, Awka, described the attitude as suicidal.
The Commissioner recalled some recent fuel tanker mishaps, especially the one that happened in Niger State where about 100 lives were lost, and wondered why people could not draw any lesson from them.
‘It happened again in Enugu State about two weeks ago and even in Anambra State at Army Barracks, and people were rushing to the scenes of the incidents with their jerry-cans and buckets to scoop fuel,’ he said.
‘Fuel is highly inflammable that once it catches fire everybody or thing around the vicinity will be burnt to ashes or beyond recognition,’ Ifeanya said.
He maintained that people engaging in scooping of fuel from fallen tankers were aware of this, but deliberately put their lives in danger because of money.
‘Once a tanker falls and starts discharging its contents, what a reasonable person should do is to run away as fast as his legs can carry him from the scene of the incident to avoid being engulfed by inferno,’ Ifeanya said.
‘As a Commissioner for Petrolatum and Mineral Resources, Anambra State, may I use this opportunity to warn our people not to play with their lives because it is just like committing a suicide,’ he cautioned.
The Anambra State Commissioner advocated the enactment of a law that would prohibit tanker drivers from plying the roads during daytime to curtail the rate of loss of lives and property whenever fuel tanker mishap occurred.
