Abule Ado Community leaders on Sunday warned scavengers to stay clear of the March 15, 2020 explosion site to avoid crisis.
The leaders spoke in Lagos on Sunday after quelling a mob action by the youth against four scavengers caught carting away iron rods from the fire-ravaged site.
They noted that what victims of the explosion needed was empathy.
Mr Dipo Olorunrinu, a former Lagos State House of Assembly member, who represented the area, said that the survivors needed assistance to rebuild the area and to be pacified.
According to him, tempers are still high; people are still pondering what happened to them and their buildings and in the middle of all that, somebody is taking away what remain in their very presence.
“It does not show love and humane attitude toward those that lost loved ones and property.
“Many of those victims still come around to formalise one or two things with the authorities and seeing somebody trying to eke a living from their misfortune will spark bad blood and hate that can lead to spontaneous beating of the people involved,” he said.
Olorunrinu, who had been supplying free food and water to the victims and the security personnel guiding the area since the incident happened, advised scavengers to keep off the area for now.
Mr Dotun Hassan, Chairman Abule Ado Stakeholders for Justice Coalition, said no sane person after seeing the level of destruction in the area would go ahead and scavenge the remains of property of victims that were still in shock.
Hassan, a Human Rights Lawyer, described the act of the four scavengers rescued from the mob as unbecoming.
“If not for the quick intervention of people of good will, those guys would have been clubbed down by now and the aftermath might snowball into ethnic crisis,” he said.
He urged the officers posted to the area not to allow anybody to take away anything from the rubbles and to help both State Inventory Taking Committee and the victims to identify who owns what.
