At least 37 people died after breathing toxic petroleum fumes during an alleged oil theft at Okari Jetty, in the Okrika Local Government Area of Nigeria’s Rivers State, an environmental advocacy group says. The incident unfolded at about midnight on Thursday, September 3, 2026.
The dead are suspected to have been involved in illegal oil bunkering, according to the Youths and Environmental Advocacy Centre (YEAC-Nigeria). Volunteers and human rights defenders working with the group across the Niger Delta had documented no fewer than 37 deaths, said Fyneface Dumnamene Fyneface, its executive director; the victims, he said, breathed in a product known locally as “Indorama fuel.”
That fuel is refined petrol, a grade of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), and it travels through a pipeline running from the Indorama Eleme Petrochemical Company, on through the Port Harcourt Refinery, to ships that berth roughly every two weeks to load cargo for export. Fyneface said the victims had run a pipe from a tapping point on that line and inhaled the fuel at high pressure as it was pumped, loading it into their boats at the same time.
What Happened at Okari Jetty
The crowd arrived in locally made boats while a ship sat at the jetty taking on petroleum products bound for export. Community sources put the number at more than 200 young men from Okrika and neighboring communities; another account described more than 100 people gathered at the site.
As the vessel loaded and the young men scooped from the illegal tap, the smell of the fuel turned sharp and overpowering. Many of them breathed the fumes at high pressure and dropped where they stood, Witnesses said, and the river took some of the bodies. Medical teams were attending to others who got away and were taken to hospitals with severe respiratory complications.
Bodies Still in the River
The dead had gone out to collect petroleum products drifting on the water, according to Igwe Godswill, who commands the Civilian Joint Task Force (JTF) in the Okrika Local Government Area. Fumes coming off the vessel being loaded overwhelmed them, he said.
“These are not criminals or anything, but they went out in search of their daily meal,” Godswill said.
By the time he spoke, he said, about 10 bodies had been recovered — four of them identified, four unrecognizable and the rest impossible to identify because the remains were badly damaged. Okrika indigenes accounted for 37 of the dead, a community source said, with six more bodies unidentified. That community tally of 43 has appeared in some Nigerian reporting and runs higher than the confirmed figure of 37.
Some of the dead had been spotted in the water but had not been retrieved, Fyneface said, and community sources reported that corpses were still surfacing in the river. Many people remain unaccounted for, and authorities say the search for the missing is continuing.
Police Confirm Deaths, Open Inquiry
An investigation was underway, Nigerian police said on Friday, September 4, in a confirmation of the incident that gave no death toll. Blessing Agabe, spokesperson for the Rivers State Police Command, confirmed that people had died while allegedly attempting to steal crude oil, and said an “investigation is ongoing to establish the circumstances surrounding the incident and ascertain the facts.”
No official complaint had been lodged with the command, Agabe said, adding that officers had begun work to establish how many people died and the circumstances of the deaths.
Nigeria’s Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) said it is working with other security agencies to establish what happened in the early hours of Thursday morning, September 3, and urged the public and the media to rely on verified information. The corps condemned illegal tapping and siphoning, warning that such activities put lives, the environment and the economy at risk.
Group Disputes the Death Toll
A group called LightHope Succor Worldwide Initiative challenged the account on September 4, saying in a statement signed by its spokesperson, Evelyn Williams, that the Nigeria Police Force, Nigerian Navy and Nigerian Army had denied that 37 people died from toxic fumes at Okari Jetty. Security authorities, the statement said, “confirmed that no such incident occurred at the jetty on the date in question.”
“The information obtained from the relevant security authorities instead indicates that the report is fake news and without credible factual basis,” the group said, adding that its position should not be read as dismissing the environmental and security problems of oil theft in the Niger Delta.
As of September 5, the group was also urging the originators of the 37-death report to provide verifiable evidence, and it called on media organizations to carry out editorial checks before reproducing claims of mass casualties.
Calls for Jobs and Pipeline Security
YEAC-Nigeria called on the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) to carry out a Joint Investigation Visit at the site without delay. The operator whose pipeline was reportedly vandalized also came under pressure from the group to tighten security around its facilities and prevent a repeat, while Fyneface told young people to keep away from oil and gas infrastructure because of the dangers involved.
Alternative livelihoods in the region were another of the group’s demands. Modular refineries figured on that list, along with the legalization of artisanal refining, the proposed Presidential Artisanal Crude Oil Refining Development Initiative (PACORDI) and a Niger Delta Industrial Park.
Godswill made a similar appeal. Employment for young people in the area was what he urged the Rivers State Government, community leaders and other authorities to create. Force alone would not stop the practice, he said, because residents would keep returning to the tapping point as long as it remained their only source of income. People went back to the site even after the deaths there had been confirmed, he said.
Oil theft has been widespread across the Niger Delta for years. Nigeria ranks as Africa’s biggest oil producer, and decades of exploration in the delta have left behind deep poverty along with badly degraded land and water. Stolen oil is widely reported to cost the country billions of dollars a year, and the Nigerian military and navy have stepped up operations against the trade in recent years.
