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Lagos pipeline fire won’t affect
fuel supply-- Kupolokun
SOPURUCHI ONWUKA
GROUP
Managing Director of Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mr. Funsho
Kupolokun, yesterday assured of steady domestic fuel supply despite losses
sustained from the Lagos pipeline fire.
He also handed down a 24-hour deadline to
three contracted firms to ensure the fire is quenched by today even as he
described the disaster as organised vandalisation.
Kupolokun visited the scene with top shots
of the parastatal, even as further details emerged that the disaster level may
be of a dimension larger than reported as residents of nearby Navy Town claimed
that over 20 storage tanks located in the marshy shores exploded in series and
sprayed fire across the water.
Fear is rife that about 200 persons may
have died in the disaster, which occurred last Thursday, with police and other
rescue workers recovering more bodies on a daily basis.
Hope for survivors appeared to be fading.
Mr. Kupolokun said the impact of the
incident on domestic fuel market would not be felt, assuring that the
corporation would sustain adequate supplies from 150 million litres stored
separately at Ibadan and Mosimi depots to areas supplied by the vandalised
pipeline.
He added that the fire would be put out in
the next 24 hours after which remediation activities and repairs would follow.
He said the actual loss in the fire
incident was still not certain but declared that it was enormous.
The GMD expressed disappointment that he
could not see any member of the community to commiserate with and wondered why
they all fled their homes.
Daily Champion
recalls that the NNPC pipeline pumping the premium motor spirit from the
corporation’s import jetty at Atlas Cove to Mosimi exploded in huge balls of
fire while an illegal bunkering syndicate was bleeding it of products late
Thursday.
Mr. Kupolokun lamented that the activities
of pipeline vandals had cost the nation over N8.2 billion and thousands of
promising citizens since 2003 in about 500 separate incidents.
The development came amid observations
that bodies of fatal victims of the pipeline blast have spread across the body
of waters in Lagos State with reports that police picked up more bodies near
Kirikiri area, a few kilometres from the scene.
Casualty figure continued to rise as more
gory details of the tragedy continue to flow.
Residents of Navy Town told Daily
Champion yesterday that a crowd of young men working for an illegal
bunkering syndicate perished when over 20 large storage tanks exploded.
They said the water strip between Navy
Town and the Imore island remained aflame with petrol for several hours, causing
those who jumped into it to suffocate and drown.
A police source said his team had removed
about 60 bodies some of which were washed ashore by rising tides.
Mr. Kupolokun regretted that those who
died in the fire explosion might not be the actual criminals but young hirelings
in the illegal activity.
He described the incident as an act of
organised vandalisation, pointing out that the operators of the syndicate were
behind the scene, lamenting that "a lot of youths have been was."
According to him, a joint security task
force raised to mount surveillance on the corporation’s pipelines have reduced
the incident from 909 in 2000 to 453 in 2003.
He expressed distress at the resurgence of
pipeline vandalisation despite classification of the act as an economic and
financial crime by the government, warning that all vandals arrested were being
prosecuted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
"What is more, when you vandalise the
pipeline, it would lead to product shortage and a lot of environmental
problems," he said, remarking that "the whole of the area will be polluted.
He said NNPC’s task force had been
directed to focus on observed areas of frequent incidents including Imore,
Akwete and Ejigbo, stressing that the rising number of victims of pipeline
explosion constitute a huge loss to the nation.
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