- We have to devise a way out of this moral and unpatriotic mess
It appears only death could do the pipeline vandals in the country part with their illicit trade. Otherwise, all would have been quiet on the Arepo front, given the number of casualties that had gone with illegal scooping of fuel which has become a pastime of the daredevil criminals for years. Just last Sunday, the vandals were at it again. A video recording shows the suspected vandals scooping petrol which was gushing out of a ruptured pipe at Akimbo Village in Atlas Cove, and Arepo, Ogun State.
Arepo, a sleepy community in Obafemi-Owode Local Government Area of Ogun State, would hardly have been known but for the activities of pipeline vandals who ensure that the klieg lights are almost always beamed on it, with their nefarious and suicidal activities. Perhaps the community would have been as peaceful as most other communities in the area, but for the fact that it plays host to a number of oil pipelines belonging to the Nigerian National Petroleum Cooperation (NNPC) which the vandals have made a point of duty to vandalise whenever they need cash. The pipelines in Arepo are used to transport refined petroleum products from the Atlas Cove Jetty in Lagos to the Western states and Kwara State. But the vandals would hardly allow for smooth transition of the commodity.
The Group Managing Director of the NNPC, Andrew Yakubu, brought the point vividly home when he told participants at the Third Triennial Delegates Conference of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association (PENGASSAN), in Abuja that: “We had over 774 break points within three months between August and October 2012 from Atlas Cove to Ilorin depot. Between Atlas Cove and Mosimi depot, we recorded 181 break points, from Mosimi to Ibadan, we had 421 ruptured points and from Mosimi to Ore, we recorded 50 vandalised points. Also between Ibadan and Ilorin we had a total of 122 break points.’ This tells us that the vandals are economic saboteurs who do not care a hoot about how their activities affect the country’s economic wellbeing
The audacity of the vandals seems to confirm the saying that it is in the mouth of the lion that money is. In other words, whoever wants to have it must be prepared for the worst. This can only be the motivation given the number of casualties that scooping of fuel in Arepo and other places had recorded. The list is endless: there were at least two explosions in Arepo alone in 2013, with the NNPC claiming it lost about N3.6billion to the vandalism of its System 2B Pipeline there.
The worst pipeline explosion in the country occurred on October 18, 1998, in Jesse Community of Ethiope-West Local Council of Delta State. Although its cause was controversial, with the Federal Government blaming it on scavengers who intentionally ruptured the pipeline, other reports blamed the explosion on poorly maintained pipelines. What was incontrovertible was the fact that more than 1,000 people were killed as a result of it.
Apart from these and the attendant fuel scarcity caused by the vandals, the local community too is never at peace as the people live in the fear of not knowing when next the vandals would strike.
The question now is, with the Sunday incident, what becomes of the billion naira contracts awarded to local militants by the President Goodluck Jonathan administration to secure the pipelines? Continual rupturing of the pipelines in spite of the contracts is a reflection of the lack of rigorous thinking in government. The incoming administration has to take a second look at the contracts with a view to returning the responsibility to the security agencies which the government must arm and give the necessary tools to properly secure the pipelines. The current arrangement whereby we not only lose our money but also our fuel has outlived its usefulness.
