HELL FROM HEAVEN!

A ruptured petroleum pipeline burst into flames while scavengers were collecting
fuel from the underground pipeline punctured overnight by an armed gang who
siphoned fuel into road tankers, leaving behind a stream of stray petroleum
gasoline for hundreds of resident scavengers. The Red Cross said the fire killed
at least 269 people and injured dozens that were trapped and burnt on the ground
next to a ramshackle automobile workshop and a saw-mill in the densely populated
district of Abule-Egba, an outskirt of Nigeria’s commercial capital, Lagos, December 26, 2006.

Nigeria, Africa oil giant, is the eight largest producer of crude oil in the
world and its earnings soared by the rise in the world market, allowing it to
build up to 40 billion US Dollars by the end of 2006; but it is also one of the
world poorest countries with a large number of its 140 million people enduring
extreme poverty amid widespread graft that makes a handful of people wealthy.
This inequality motivates those who sabotage oil pipelines and the villagers who
pilfer the fuel for sale in the black market where it is sold three-fold.

While the response of the emergency fire service equipped with leaking water hoses
delayed, other villagers assisted in using water collected in buckets, to subdue
the fire that lasted four hours.