Nigeria: 31 people killed in rush for food at church charity event

Tragedy occurred after hundreds waiting for donations broke through a gate

Footwear litters the street following a crush at a food charity event in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. AP

Thirty-one people were killed in a rush for food at a church charity event in Nigeria's southern Rivers state, police said.

Hundreds of people who had turned up to receive food at the Port Harcourt Polo Club early on Saturday broke through a gate, Grace Iringe-Koko, police spokeswoman for Rivers state, said.

“People were there earlier and some got impatient and started rushing. The police are on the ground monitoring the situation while the investigation is continuing,” she said.

Images posted on social media showed relatives crying and attending to the injured, many of them children, outside the city's military hospital.

Witnesses described frantic pushing and trampling as people trying to get to the entrance were forced back.

“They were telling people 'Go back, go back, go back',” Chisom Nwachukwu told AFP. “Some people that were pushing from backwards [behind] were marching on those people.”

Police said a criminal investigation was under way.

National Emergency Management Agency southern region co-ordinator Godwin Tepikor told AFP that church members were sitting inside when people rushed in.

“A huge crowd from outside surged into the club through a narrow gate,” he said.

“The injured and the dead have been taken to the hospital and mortuary.”

Similar tragedies over food distribution in Nigeria have taken place in recent years. Last year, in north Borno State, seven women were trampled to death at an aid agency food programme.

The deaths happened as the opposition People's Democratic Party leaders gathered in the federal capital Abuja to select their candidate for the 2023 presidential race, including hopeful Rivers State governor Ezenwo Nyesom Wike.

Port Harcourt is the main oil centre in Nigeria, Africa's most populous country and one of the continent's largest petroleum producers.

Despite its oil wealth, as many as four out of 10 Nigerians live below the national poverty level, according to a recent World Bank Report.

The war in Ukraine has also pushed up the cost of food and fuel across the continent as wheat and gas supplies are affected, prompting aid agencies to warn about worsening food insecurity across Africa.

With reporting from agencies.