The remains of more than a hundred people who died in an explosion at an illegal refinery in southern Nigeria were buried on Tuesday evening April 26 in three mass graves, an official source said.
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Friday’s blast between Rivers and Imo states is one of the worst in recent years in a region where oil thefts and illegal refining are causing huge losses for Africa’s biggest crude producer . President Muhammadu Buhari referred “a national disaster”in a statement released by his services.
The charred bodies were buried in three mass graves in the presence of local Imo state officials. No family members of the victims were present as the charred bodies were unrecognizable, making identification impossible, Ifeanyi Nnaji, a local official with the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) told AFP. ).
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The Niger Delta region is devastated by decades of vandalism and illegal hydrocarbon exploitation. Armed groups and residents regularly siphon crude from pipelines owned by major oil companies, which they then refine at illegal sites and resell on the black market.
Mele Kyari, director of the national oil company, estimated that Nigeria is losing nearly 250,000 barrels a day to thieves. Since January, “At the current price of $100 a barrel, we’ve lost about $1.5 billion”he said during a parliamentary hearing.
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Despite the country’s immense wealth in hydrocarbons, most of the inhabitants live in great poverty and regularly accuse the big oil companies of having also contributed to the pollution of their region without participating in its development. Decades of oil spills have devastated mangroves and entire villages, where fishing and agriculture once provided the main local source of income.
Nigeria’s worst pipeline explosion occurred in October 1998 in the southern town of Jesse, killing more than 1,000 residents.