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10 pipeline vandals arrested
•Lagos fire victims for burial Thursday
RASHEED BISIRIYU, SOPURUCHI ONWUKA and
CHARLES OBASI
POLICE in
Lagos said they have arrested no fewer than 10 suspected pipeline vandals.
The suspects were picked up last Friday at
Coconut area of Olodi , Apapa, as they allegedly siphoned petroleum products
from a tampered pipeline.
They were nabbed amid reports that the
bodies of 43 victims of last Thursday’s Imore island village pipeline disaster
are to be buried on Thursday even as two survivors are reportedly in critical
condition in a hospital.
Also, the fire at the disaster scene was
finally quenched yesterday.
Police sources told Daily Champion
that the 10 suspected vandals were picked up by the Task Force on Petroleum
Pipelines Vandalization.
The task force said to have got wind of
the activities of the suspects and stormed the scene at Coconut where they were
arrested.
They were allegedly caught siphoning
petroleum products with one drum, 15 50-litre jerry cans containing diesel and
five empty jerry cans.
State Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO),
Mr. Emmanuel Ighodalo, who confirmed the arrest, said investigation on the
matter is now going on.
Lagos State Commissioner for Health, Dr.
Lekan Pitan said yesterday that the 43 corpses deposited at the General Hospital
mortuary were in various stages of decomposition and constituted serious health
hazard, hence the quick burial.
Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC)
had alleged that the Imore incident was caused by unknown vandals who ruptured
the corporation’s pipeline opening up opportunity for the villagers and others
to scoop fuel.
Dr. Pitan said since the disaster was made
public last Friday, only one of the decomposing bodies had been identified by
his people.
Dr. Pitan, who briefed newsmen at Alausa,
the state government secretariat, therefore, gave relations of the victims up to
tomorrow to visit the morgue and identify them before the mass burial.
"In view of the bad state of these bodies,
we are hereby calling on the general public to come and identify their relations
on or before Wednesday, September 22, 2004, as mass burial on all unidentified
bodies will be carried out on Thursday, September 23, 2004," he declared.
The commissioner also disclosed that two
other patients who are victims of the pipeline fire were being attended to at
the General Hospital.
Although, he noted that their conditions
were very critical, the commissioner said medical experts at the hospital were
working round the clock to save their lives.
Meanwhile, calm returned to Imore
yesterday as the ball of fire at the scene of the pipeline explosion was
quenched by the intensive effort of three fire fighting teams.
Group Managing Director of NNPC, Mr. Funso
Kupolokun, who visited the scene on Sunday, had given the contractors 24 hours
to put out the fire.
Entry into the village was restricted
yesterday by security agents who were stationed in the deserted village since
last Thursday when the incident occurred.
A source told Daily Champion that
the fire was put out Sunday night as the three contractors applied different
techniques to beat their client’s deadline.
On Sunday morning, heavy earth moving
equipment were deployed to heap mountains of sand to cover the fire while two
energy companies sprayed liquid chemicals on the fire in a concerted effort to
bring it under control.
Meanwhile, speculations were rife among
the residents of neighbouring Navy Town that bodies of some of the victims close
to the fire might have been inadvertently buried in the heaps of sand scraped
from the marshy surroundings.
Officials of NNPC, BP Gas, Sahara Energy
and Julius Berger were seen inspecting locations within the fire scene,
indicating that the heated ground had cooled down.
All the villagers were still outside their
homes after fleeing to evade arrest the first day of the incident.
Both the Lagos State Deputy Governor,
Chief Femi Pedro, and Mr. Kupolokun had expressed disappointment and curiosity
of the hasty disappearance of all members of the community, old and young.
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