Fuel-tanker fireball horror: A petrol tanker exploded on a busy highway in Niger State overnight, killing at least 31 people and reducing several vehicles to shells. Emergency crews are still combing the scene for remains.

The night sky over Lambata–Gawu section of the Abuja–Kaduna expressway turned orange at 23:14 on Sunday. A 45 000-litre petrol tanker, registration KMC 641 XA, left the carriageway, kissed the steel guard-rail, and detonated into a rolling fireball that swallowed eight vehicles and at least 31 human beings. At dawn today, the asphalt was still steaming; fragments of femur and charred wrist-watches glinted between lumps of melted tyre.

I walked the 200-metre cordon with Federal Road Safety Corps commander Florence Gwamna. She kept her voice low, more to steady herself than for secrecy.

“We have counted 31 corpses, but the heat was so intense the bones fragmented. We are picking them up with garden trowels.”

Behind her, a man in a blood-soaked kaftan sat on the median. He gave his name as Danladi Musa, a tomato trader from Zuba.

“I was three cars behind the tanker when it swerved. Before I could flash my lights, the whole world went silent, then white. I found my wife’s wrapper on the ground, but only the wrapper.”

The tanker belonged to Havilah Energy Ltd, a Lagos-based marketer licensed last April. Company papers seen by this reporter show the vehicle passed a “road-worthiness” test on 2 October—yet the driver’s logbook reveals he left Lagos 19 hours earlier, stopping only once at Ogbomosho. FRSC preliminary findings point to brake failure on the 5-kilometre Lambata descent, a stretch notorious for its unfinished emergency bays.

Minna General Hospital mortuary is overflowing. Attendants laid remains on the floor, covering each heat-shrunk corpse with green hospital sheets because they ran out of body bags. Dr. Rebecca Ogah, the consultant on duty, said identification may take weeks.

“DNA extraction is complicated when tissue is cooked at 1 200 °C. We are asking relatives for toothbrushes, combs, anything with follicles.”

Governor Mohammed Umar Bago arrived at 05:10, face mask soaked in the smell of diesel and burnt flesh. He promised N200 million in relief, then bristled when reporters asked why the highway—federal property—still lacks speed-calming barriers promised since 2018.

“Hold FERMA, not me,” he snapped before his convoy sped off, sirens slicing the morning.

By 07:00, villagers had formed a silent picket, refusing to let another tanker pass until the road is fixed. One placard read: “We are not collateral for your greed.”

I tracked down the only surviving eyewitness who recorded the explosion. Twenty-year-old Grace Eze, a corper heading to Kaduna, shot a 14-second clip from her phone. In the footage, flames arc like liquid sunrise; a voice—hers—whispers, “Jesus, Jesus,” then the screen blacks out.

“I uploaded it before my data finished,” she told me, hands still trembling. “Those screams keep playing in my ears.”

Back at the scene, an FRSC investigator picked up a half-melted baby shoe, size 4. No one has come forward to claim it. The official toll stands at 31 dead, 42 injured, but with femur shards still being sifted from the bitumen, the number is a moving target.

The highway reopened at 11:06, escorted by soldiers. Traffic crawled past the crater; drivers wound up their windows against the smell, yet every face inside stared left, unable to look away from the line of roasted carcasses that were, only hours earlier, husbands, wives, children, dreams.

This has been The Red Hot Report from Pepper-Room. The news that bears it all.

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