At least 34 people died in a fire at a smuggled fuel warehouse in southern Benin, near the border with Nigeria, on Saturday September 23, Interior Minister Alassane Seidou announced. “This morning there was a serious fire in the town of Seme Podji. We have unfortunately recorded 34 deaths, including two babies,” he told reporters.
The bodies were found charred at the scene, he said. Twenty people were also injured, some seriously, and hospitalized, he said. The exact circumstances of the fire were unclear at the time. However, the Interior Minister assumes that “the cause of the fire is the fuel of the contraband.”
For decades, fuel kept at artificially low prices in Nigeria thanks to government subsidies was transported illegally by road to neighboring countries, particularly Benin, where it was resold on the black market by a variety of informal sellers. When Nigeria’s new president, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, came to power in May, he ended fuel subsidies, causing an immediate rise in prices.
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The President viewed these subsidies as an unsustainable financial hole and particularly denounced the immense smuggling of subsidized gasoline into neighboring countries. The end of subsidized fuel in Nigeria had an immediate impact on the prices of black market fuel sold in Benin and other neighboring countries.