An environmental advocacy group said toxic petroleum fumes killed at least 37 people during an alleged oil theft. The deaths occurred at Okari Jetty, in the Okrika Local Government Area of Nigeria’s Rivers State, at about midnight on Thursday, September 3, 2026.

Those who died 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 have documented no fewer than 37 deaths, said Fyneface Dumnamene Fyneface, its executive director, with the victims having breathed in a product known locally as “Indorama fuel.”

The product is refined petrol, a grade of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS). A pipeline carries it from the Indorama Eleme Petrochemical Company through the Port Harcourt Refinery and out to ships, which berth roughly every two weeks to take on cargo for export. A pipe had been connected by the victims to a tapping point on that line, Fyneface said, and they loaded the fuel into their boats while inhaling it at high pressure as it was pumped.

What Unfolded at Okari Jetty

The crowd arrived in locally made boats while a ship sat berthed at the jetty, taking on petroleum products bound for export. More than 200 young men from Okrika and neighboring communities made up the crowd, according to community sources; 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 collapsed where they stood, witnesses said, and some fell into the river. Hospitals received others who got away, admitting them with severe respiratory complications, and medical teams were attending to them.

Bodies Still in the Water

Igwe Godswill, commander of the Civilian Joint Task Force (JTF) in the Okrika Local Government Area, said the victims came to the water to collect petroleum products drifting on it. Fumes coming off the vessel being loaded then 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, about 10 bodies had been recovered, he said. Four of them had been identified and four were unrecognizable, while badly damaged remains made the rest impossible to identify. A community source counted 37 of the dead as Okrika indigenes, with six more bodies unidentified — a community tally of 43 that has appeared in some Nigerian reporting, higher than the confirmed figure of 37.

Many people remain unaccounted for. 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. The search for the missing is continuing, authorities say.

Police Confirm Deaths, Open Inquiry

Police in Nigeria confirmed the incident on Friday, September 4, without giving a death toll, and said an investigation was underway. People had died while allegedly attempting to steal crude oil, confirmed Blessing Agabe, spokesperson for the Rivers State Police Command, who added that 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 surrounding the deaths.

Group Says Agencies Deny the Incident

An organization called LightHope Succor Worldwide Initiative said on Friday, September 4, that the Nigeria Police Force, Nigerian Navy and Nigerian Army had denied the reports of 37 deaths from toxic fumes at Okari Jetty. Senior authorities of the three agencies “confirmed that no such incident occurred at the jetty on the date in question,” the group said in a statement signed by its spokesperson, Evelyn Williams. “Consequently, our preliminary investigation has been unable to establish the veracity of the reported 37 fatalities,” the statement said. That account conflicts with the Rivers State Police Command’s confirmation that people had died at the site.

In the same statement, the group urged the originators of the report to provide verifiable evidence and called on media organizations to carry out editorial checks before reproducing mass-casualty claims. Its findings, the group added, should not be interpreted as a dismissal of the environmental and security challenges associated with oil theft, pipeline vandalism and related activities in the Niger Delta.

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, and it pressed the operator whose pipeline was reportedly vandalized to tighten security around its facilities so the disaster is not repeated. Young people should keep away from oil and gas infrastructure because of the dangers involved, Fyneface warned.

Alternative livelihoods for the region also drew a push from the group, which listed modular refineries, the legalization of artisanal refining, the proposed Presidential Artisanal Crude Oil Refining Development Initiative (PACORDI) and a Niger Delta Industrial Park.

A similar appeal came from Godswill, who asked the Rivers State Government, community leaders and other authorities to create employment for young people in the area. 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. Even after the deaths there had been confirmed, he said, people went back to the site.

Oil theft has been widespread across the Niger Delta for years. Africa’s biggest oil producer is Nigeria, and decades of exploration in the delta have left behind deep poverty and badly degraded land and water. Reports widely put the cost of stolen oil to the country at billions of dollars a year, and operations against the trade have been stepped up in recent years by the Nigerian military and navy.

Authorities had issued no official death toll of their own as of the police statement on Friday, September 4, saying only that the inquiry into what happened at Okari Jetty was continuing.