A desperate bid to tap crude products from a docked export vessel turned fatal this week in Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta, with a local rights group reporting that dozens of people lost their lives after breathing in dangerously concentrated petroleum vapours. The tragedy struck around midnight on Thursday, September 3, at Okari Jetty in the Okrika Mainland, where a vessel had been loading petroleum products for export.
According to the Youths and Environmental Advocacy Center (YEAC-Nigeria), the tragedy unfolded overnight at the Okari Jetty in the Okrika area, where a crowd of mostly young men descended on the waterfront in small, locally built boats. Their goal, the group says, was to draw fuel from a pipeline connection that had been illegally rigged to intercept petroleum products as they moved from a nearby petrochemical plant toward the docked ship. Because the pipeline was actively pumping at the time to load the vessel for export, the diverted fuel came out under heavy pressure — conditions the advocacy center says overwhelmed the crowd with fumes far faster than they could escape.
YEAC’s executive director said his organization relied on a grassroots web of community monitors and human rights defenders across the delta to compile its casualty count, which stood at no fewer than 37 confirmed fatalities as of Friday, though he cautioned that the true number could climb. Some other local outlets, citing separate community sources, put the toll as high as 43. Search-and-recovery efforts have been complicated by the fact that several bodies were reportedly seen drifting in the river but have not yet been pulled out, and an unknown number of participants remain unaccounted for.
Rivers State police acknowledged that fatalities occurred but stopped short of confirming an official death count, saying only that those killed had allegedly been trying to steal crude oil and that a formal inquiry had been opened. A police spokesperson said investigators still needed time before releasing verified figures.
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The episode is only the latest in a long-running pattern of deadly pipeline tapping across the Niger Delta, a swampy, resource-rich region that has powered Nigeria’s economy for generations while leaving many of its own residents mired in poverty and surrounded by environmental damage from decades of drilling and spills. Illegal tapping, often called “bunkering” locally, persists despite periodic military crackdowns, in part because it offers a rare source of income in communities with few formal jobs. Nigerian authorities have previously estimated that theft and sabotage of oil infrastructure drain billions of dollars from the country’s finances every year.
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In its statement, the advocacy group condemned the vandalism that made the tapping possible but also pressed authorities to address the deeper economic pressures pushing young people toward such dangerous work. It called for a joint site inspection by Nigeria’s oil-spill response agency, tighter security around vulnerable pipeline infrastructure, and renewed government support for legal alternatives — including small-scale, regulated refining — that might give delta communities a safer path to earning a living.
As of Friday, the final toll remained unsettled, and the search for the missing continued.
