No fewer than seven people lost their lives after inhaling fumes from a generator set placed inside a music studio in the early hours of Tuesday in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State.
The tragic incident occurred along Transformer Road, Amarata, in the Yenagoa Local Government Area of the state.
According to other residents, the victims were working at a recording studio owned by one of them, Akpos Barakubo.
They were claimed to have worked late into the night on Monday using a generator due to the state’s poor power supply situation, and they may have drifted off while the generator was running in the studio, which lacked sufficient ventilation.
Six of the victims were found dead on Tuesday morning, while one who was unconscious was taken to the hospital but later died.
Some of the victim were claimed to be Niger Delta University (NDU) students who work in the music industry to help pay for their education.
Security personnel had cleared the scene as of press time, with the dead evacuated and deposited at the mortuary.
A neighbour named Damion blamed the unfortunate incident on the state’s weak power supply.
He said, “If there was public power supply, maybe these people wouldn’t have lost their lives in these circumstances.
“Seven able-bodied young men just died like that because of the failure of the government. The most annoying thing is that tomorrow, the PHED personnel will come with ladders to disconnect lights that they are not supplying.
“How can people be spending their money on fueling generators despite the current hardship in Nigeria, even after paying for light bills?”
An attempt to contact the state police command’s spokesman, ASP Musa Muhammed, was unsuccessful since his cell phone line was not working.
