NAIJAMARKET

What better way to capture the moment than this?

The first prize winning photo in the Spot News Singles category of the 2007 World Press Photo Contest, by Reuters photographer Akintunde Akinleye, shows a man rinsing soot from his face after a gas pipeline explosion in Lagos, Nigeria December 26, 2006. The prize-winning entries were announced on February 9, 2007.

A Nigerian man rinses soot from his face at the scene of a petroleum gas pipelineexplosion near Nigeria's commercial capital Lagos, Tuesday, December 26, 2006.

A ruptured petroleum pipeline burst into flames while scavengers were collectingfuel from the underground pipeline punctured overnight by an armed gang whosiphoned fuel into road tankers, leaving behind a stream of stray petroleumgasoline for hundreds of resident scavengers. The Red Cross said the fire killedat least 269 people and injured dozens that were trapped and burnt on the groundnext to a ramshackle automobile workshop and a saw-mill in the densely populateddistrict of Abule-Egba, an outskirt of Nigeria’s commercial capital, Lagos.

Nigeria, Africa oil giant, is the eight largest producer of crude oil in theworld and its earnings soared by the rise in the world market, allowing it tobuild up to 40 billion US Dollars by the end of 2006; but it is also one of theworld poorest countries with a large number of its 140 million people enduringextreme poverty amid widespread graft that makes a handful of people wealthy.This inequality motivates those who sabotage oil pipelines and the villagers whopilfer the fuel for sale in the black market where it is sold three-fold.
While the response of the emergency fire service equipped with leaking water hosesdelayed, other villagers assisted in using water collected in buckets, to subduethe fire that lasted four hours.

Akintunde Akinleye Reuters, Lagos, Nigeria.

Akintunde Akinleye (36), Nigeria, started in photography at high school, later graduating with a Bachelor of Education degree in Social Studies from Ondo State University. He enrolled at the Nigerian Institute of Journalism, Lagos, for a post-graduate diploma in Journalism in 1999, and in 2003 completed a master's degree in educational technology at the University of Lagos. Later in 2003 he was employed as a staff photographer on Nigeria's Daily Independent, moving on to a job at Reuters in 2005. He has had work published in such newspapers as such as The Washington Post, International Herald Tribune and The New York Times. In 2005 Akintunde was a participant of the first photojournalism course organized by World Press Photo in cooperation with the Nigerian Institute for Journalism. In January 2007, he had a solo exhibition at the gallery of the School of Art, Yaba College of Technology, Lagos. www.akintunde1.com See Akintunde Akinleye talk about his work. Click here to start the flash film