Toxic petroleum fumes killed at least 37 people at Okari Jetty in the Okrika Local Government Area of Nigeria’s Rivers State at about midnight on Thursday, September 3, 2026, an environmental advocacy group said, describing the deaths as having occurred during an alleged oil theft.
Illegal oil bunkering is what the dead are suspected to have been involved in, according to the group, the Youths and Environmental Advocacy Centre (YEAC-Nigeria). Volunteers and human rights defenders who work with the organization across the Niger Delta had documented no fewer than 37 deaths after the victims breathed in a product known locally as “Indorama fuel,” its executive director, Fyneface Dumnamene Fyneface, said.
The product is refined petrol, a grade of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), and it moves through a pipeline running from the Indorama Eleme Petrochemical Company through the Port Harcourt Refinery to ships that berth roughly every two weeks to take on cargo for export. A tapping point on that line had been fitted with a pipe by the victims, according to Fyneface, who said they breathed in the fuel as it came through under high pressure while they loaded it into their boats at the same time.
What Happened at Okari Jetty
The crowd arrived in locally made boats while a ship, berthed at the jetty, was taking on petroleum products bound for export. Community sources counted more than 200 young men from Okrika and neighboring communities; another account put more than 100 people 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 collapsed where they stood after breathing the fumes at high pressure, witnesses said, and some fell into the river. Hospitals received others who got away, admitting them with severe respiratory complications, where medical teams were attending to them.
Bodies Still in the River
The victims had gone to gather petroleum products floating on the water, and the fumes rising from the vessel as it was loaded overcame them, said Igwe Godswill, commander of the Civilian Joint Task Force (JTF) in the Okrika Local Government Area.
“These are not criminals or anything, but they went out in search of their daily meal,” Godswill said.
About 10 bodies had been recovered by the time he spoke, he said. Four had been identified and four were unrecognizable, with the rest impossible to identify because the remains were badly damaged. A community source identified 37 of the dead as Okrika indigenes and counted six more unidentified bodies — a community tally of 43 that some Nigerian reporting now carries as the death toll, higher than the at least 37 reported elsewhere.
Many people remain unaccounted for. Some of the dead had been spotted in the water but had not been retrieved, Fyneface said, while community sources reported that corpses were still surfacing in the river. The search for the missing is continuing, according to authorities.
Police Confirm Deaths, Open Inquiry
Nigerian police confirmed the incident on Friday, September 4, offering no death toll and saying an investigation was underway. Blessing Agabe, spokesperson for the Rivers State Police Command, said an “investigation is ongoing to establish the circumstances surrounding the incident and ascertain the facts,” and confirmed that people had died while allegedly attempting to steal crude oil.
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 surrounding the deaths.
A group called LightHope Succor Worldwide Initiative said on Friday, September 4, that it had contacted senior authorities of the Nigeria Police Force, Nigerian Navy and Nigerian Army, who “confirmed that no such incident occurred at the jetty on the date in question.” In a statement signed by its spokesperson, Evelyn Williams, the organization said: “The information obtained from the relevant security authorities instead indicates that the report is fake news and without credible factual basis.” It urged the report’s originators to provide verifiable evidence and media organizations to carry out editorial checks before reproducing mass-casualty claims, and said its findings should not be read as dismissing the environmental and security problems tied to oil theft and pipeline vandalism in the Niger Delta.
The Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) asked the public and the media to rely on verified information while it works with other security agencies to establish what happened in the early hours of Thursday morning, as of a September 4 report. The corps condemned illegal tapping and siphoning, warning that such activities put lives, the environment and the economy at risk.
Calls for Jobs and Pipeline Security
A Joint Investigation Visit to the site should be carried out without delay by the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA), YEAC-Nigeria said, and the group pressed the operator whose pipeline was reportedly vandalized to tighten security around its facilities so nothing like it happens again. Young people should keep away from oil and gas infrastructure because of the dangers involved, Fyneface warned.
The group also called for alternative livelihoods in the region: modular refineries, the legalization of artisanal refining, the proposed Presidential Artisanal Crude Oil Refining Development Initiative (PACORDI) and a Niger Delta Industrial Park.
Employment for young people in the area was what Godswill called for in a similar appeal directed at the Rivers State Government, community leaders and other authorities. Force alone would not end the practice, he said, because the tapping point was the only source of income residents had, and they would go on returning to it. People went back to the site even after the deaths there had been confirmed, he said.
Across the Niger Delta, oil theft has been widespread for many years. Decades of exploration in the delta have left behind deep poverty and badly degraded land and water in Nigeria, which ranks as Africa’s biggest oil producer. Reports widely put the cost of stolen oil to the country at billions of dollars a year, and operations against the trade by the Nigerian military and navy have been stepped up in recent years.
When police issued their statement on Friday, September 4, they had put out no official death toll of their own, saying only that the inquiry into what happened at Okari Jetty was continuing.