LONG before last week, residents of
Tunde Alabi Street and its adjoining areas in Ejigbo, a surbub of Lagos
in the Ejigbo Local Council Development Area (LCDA), had lived in
peace, unaware of the danger waiting to explode around their homes.
But the peace in the neighbourhood was
shattered after the discovery of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), popularly
known as petrol, in some wells in the area. Even before the dust
generated by the discovery could settle down, another hail of fresh dust
was raised on Tuesday, August 27, 2013, when a troop of armed and stern
looking security men, comprising soldiers and men of the Nigeria
Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), stormed the area in search of
homes with large deposits of petroleum in their wells in the sleepy
community.
Some of the bewildered residents stood
in groups, discussing the strange find, while some others peeped from
their windows as they watched in amazement as the security men combed
suspected buildings in the area. Their countenance showed that they had
never seen such a large number of armed security men in the community.
From the entrance of one of the streets,
Animatu Ilo, to every nook and cranny of the community, the security
men stood combat-ready at strategic positions in their numbers, as if on
a mission to quell a boisterous ethnic clash.
Virtually all the raided houses were said to have large deposits of refined petroleum not mixed with water in their wells.
However, the house owners claimed
ignorance of the development. Most them claimed that they had locked up
the wells for periods ranging between six and seven years, and switched
to boreholes after discovering that water from the wells were not good
enough for human consumption. They said they were not aware that the
wells had turned to large deposits of petroleum product after they
locked and stopped using them about six year ago.
One of the house owners, Mrs. Perpetua
Nwosu, expressed surprise that such quantity of petrol was in her well
inside the building, located at 8, Tunde Alabi Street. She said: “I
don’t even know what to say. I don’t know what to say. I never knew I
had been living with fuel. If I knew that there was fuel in this
compound, my dear, I would have left the house. When I came in here
about six to seven years ago, the first thing we feared was fuel. They
dug fuel at this junction here. I never knew they were doing it until I
came out around 6am and found that the smell of fuel was all over the
place and there was smoke everywhere.
“My grandmother was with me then, so I
had to pack out for one week. Throughout that period, I didn’t come
close to this area. I have closed the well for the past six years. Today
is my first day that I would open that well since I dug it six years
ago. When I opened it, the security agents said they wanted to fetch the
water and I gave them a fetching pail to do so. What they brought out
was pure fuel. It is my compound. They did not bring out any water. It
was pure fuel. I never knew.
“I dug the well before I moved in here
because it was the water that we used for building the house. But there
was no fuel in it then. It was purely water. Why I dug this borehole was
because I discovered that the well was smelling, as if contaminated by
fuel. When I observed that, I locked it up and dug this borehole. I have
not been using it for the past six years.”
Asked if she reported to anybody that
the smell of fuel was coming from the well, she replied: “What I am
telling you is that the moment I knew that it was smelling, I locked it
up. But I didn’t know that the fuel was in large quantity. I am not the
only one; the whole of this area’s wells are smelling. Nobody knew how
the fuel went in and how to go about it. Then the next thing we did was
to condemn this well. I thought that was the only way I could take care
of the problem.
“Thereafter, I dug this borehole. I dug
the borehole with the hope that if it was deeper, it would not smell,
but after constructing the borehole, we still discovered that it was
still smelling. I am not using it for cooking. I go out to get water
that I use. If I knew that the fuel in the well was as much as the
quantity they scooped out today, I would not have even been using it for
bathing.”
The story was the same when the security
operatives visited the building of one Alhaja Kudirat Lawal. She lives
next door to Mrs. Nwosu at house No 10. A large deposit of refined
petroleum product was also found in her well. She also denied the
knowledge of the development. She said: “I don’t know what to say
because when we came here seven years ago, we dug this well for our use.
Suddenly, we observed that our bodies were reacting after using it to
bathe. We, thereafter, locked it up on the instructions of my husband
when the water was not fit for bathing or drinking. It was after that
experience that we dug this borehole. We have not opened it for the past
six years. When he was travelling about three days ago, I asked him for
the key because law enforcement agents were around. But he didn’t know
where he kept it, and he said they should break it on arrival. I was
even joking with my children this morning that the water might even be
gushing out because it had been long when we opened it.
“Many houses in this area have the same
problem. We cannot drink our water. I believe the men were working on it
before now. I am a woman; it is not everything that they discuss in
their meetings that they will come back and tell me at home. We have
been buying pure water for drinking in the house. We never opened the
well since that period. We never knew that it contained a large deposit
of fuel. I was equally surprised when they opened it. If this had not
happened, we would not have known the solution to our problems.”
Admitting that it is hazardous to live
in the area, she said: “We know that it is dangerous to our health. If
anything should happen, the children and others in the house are not
safe. If they want to blame us, it should be minimal because we were not
aware of this quantity of fuel in the well. It is a problem for us and
we have been panicking since it was found. I have started moving my
belongings to another place because we are not safe in this area. It is
that of the well that we have seen, what about the ground we are
standing on? What do we know that is right there? If there should be a
fire outbreak, the ground would also catch fire. Even as we are standing
here, there is strong likelihood that we are standing on fuel. The
environment is not safe for us to stay. If there is a solution for it,
they should help us.
“They have picked up my sales girl. I am
ready to submit myself to them so that they can allow the innocent girl
to go. They held a meeting about this problem recently and planned to
go to the NNPC to report. When we called our chairman earlier, he said
they would go to the police station to report the problem. My husband
was around at the time, and he advised he should go to the NNPC to
complain because going to report to the police may not be the solution.
That was the outcome of the meeting they had six days ago. Nobody would
be happy to live in danger. I know what it took me to have my children.
How would I be aware of this kind of a thing and happily keep them here?
I have been thinking of relocating them immediately this revelation was
made. I have made them to understand that they would not be returning
to the house after closing from school because the house is not safe for
them to live in. They should help us to proffer a solution to the
problem.”
Commenting on the development, Mr.
Jolaosho Taofeek, the Financial Secretary of the community, said: “We
have contacted the NNPC on many occasions on this matter. If you look at
the entrance of the street, you will see a pipeline. On many occasions,
we had to call NNPC officials to come there for repairs. There were
times we would wake up to see fuel coming out from the ground. It has
been very terrible, and on many occasions, we have had reasons to tell
residents not to make fire until the arrival of the NNPC officials.
Immediately they arrive, they would do the repairs, but the problem
persists. What we have seen is that there are many ruptures in the
pipeline. Most of the pipelines were laid about 40 to 50 years ago.
There is nothing like sabotage in our area here because we have security
guards everywhere. It is a clear case of ruptures.
“They said that they abandoned the wells
when they observed it was contaminated. You will find out that
virtually all the affected houses have boreholes. They were forced to
dig the boreholes because the wells were contaminated. The contamination
is a general trend in the area.”
In a chat with our correspondents, the
Deputy Commandant of the NSCDC in Lagos, Mr Fasiu Adeyinka, said they
embarked on the raid after they were given privileged information about
the large deposits of petrol in some wells located in the community. He
maintained that his men are prepared to ensure the safety of Nigerians.
However, residents of Ejigbo are not
alone in the problem of ruptured NNPC pipelines. Areas like Iyana Odo
community, Pipeline and Diamond Estate, all in the Alimosho Local
Government Area of Lagos State, are battling with the daily threat of
fuel leak from NNPC pipelines.
For instance, danger was recently
averted at Iyana Odo community when a pipeline suddenly burst, emptying
its contents into the street, a short distance away from Peace Estate. A
resident of the community, who gave his name as Comrade Popoola
Musiliu, narrated how the residents narrowly escaped the havoc that the
leakage would have wreaked.
He said: “About two months ago, we saw a
liquid substance like petrol coming from the ground. When we noticed
it, we quickly reported the development at the NSCDC office opposite us.
They came and secured the area. NNPC officials later came and rectified
the problem, but before the end of the day, it ruptured again. They
later came back and fixed it again. We have not noticed any form of
leakage since then.”
Prior to the incident, residents of
Diamond Estate, a Federal Government Housing Estate, located in the
area, had a similar challenge when their wells were found to be
contaminated with fuel. For a long time, the residents lived under
perpetual fear. They neither could make fire in their houses nor get
good water for their daily use.
Though the problem has largely been put
under control, the chairman of the estate, Mr. Akinsulire, said danger
has not been totally averted.
Narrating how the problem started, he
said: “The presence of fuel was found in the well in December 2010 when
people started moving in here. We knew that to some extent, some other
estates like Baruwa, Shagari had a similar experience in the 1990s. We
didn’t notice ours until around November and December, 2010. Initially,
when we moved into the estate, the water we had was clean. There was no
mixture of any external product. But from that point that we had the
pollution, as I would call it, we called on the NNPC and other
government agencies. The NNPC at that point came and put some measures
in place. They dug some trenches where they started evacuating this
product over a long period of time. The problem is reducing, if you put
it in percentage from the period we noticed it to this point we are, it
has moved from 100 percent to about 20 percent. If you move around, you
will still perceive smell of petrol in the estate, but it is not as
strong as it was before.
“The explanation they gave us was that
fuel vandals had tampered with pipelines over the years in the area and
that was why it was so. Petrol has no oxygen, it can move over a long
period of time. Like I said, the presence has reduced after the
evacuation in this area because I cannot speak for other neighbouring
places. It moved from one place to our area, but it has reduced after
the evacuation but we don’t know what can happen between today and
tomorrow, maybe it is going to move again because it has to do with the
movement of the product.
“Initially, we started observing a
disturbing smell of petroleum product all around the estate. At that
point, we could not open our windows. If you went anywhere in the
estate, you only needed to dig just about six inches or about one feet
to get petroleum product. You only needed to dig just one foot and it
would start gushing out in everybody’s house. It was so bad that
majority of the residents could not even cook.
“It took a collective effort to survive
the problem. There was mass awareness because we knew we had a big
problem in our hands and collectively, we tackled it. The fact that we
live in an enlightened environment really helped us to manage the
challenge. The closest threat we had was when vandals went to the back
of the fence to scoop oil and there was fire. They ran away but we
invited fire fighters that saved the situation. Apart from that, we were
able to manage the situation and can sleep now unlike before.
“The remaining 20 per cent is not
specifically in one area. Before, it was highly concentrated around our
Phase Two. It moved from that end to the lower end of Phase One. Some
people still have the mixture of petrol in their water, but it is not as
bad as it was much earlier. A lot of people still buy water. I buy
water too. There is a very high content of lead in the water.”
The only solution, according to him, is
for the “NNPC to remove the product from under our feet. That is all.
Obviously an impact assessment was done before the estate was built, but
it did not reveal the challenge at that point. It is the movement of
the product from the previously contaminated area to this area over a
period of time.
“There is only one body that is in
charge of petroleum in the country. That is NNPC. When this problem
started, they were the first people we called. When they came, they did
their investigation and the evacuation and all that. Initially, they
said they could not say the product was from them. They said they could
be seepage from some petroleum companies in this area through their
tank. We went through that over a period of time and another story later
came in that it might be the pipeline that passes through.
“Whether it is the pipeline or whatever,
the fact is that it is still the product of the NNPC. It is not a
product that can be manufactured in anybody’s house and all we are
saying is, remove this product from the ground. There should be a metre
that monitors the movement of the product from the source to the
destination. When I had a meeting with them, I asked them if from point
A, I am giving 100 litres, when it gets to point B, it should be about
98 per cent, but when I lose about 20 or 30 per cent, didn’t they think
something was amiss? What they said was that there might be some vandals
tapping their pipeline. It is dangerous to live with it. When we
noticed it, the first thing that came to our mind was our health and
safety. If we could remember, we had the case of some Chinese that were
scooping the product in their house. They were keeping it in their drums
but were later arrested. The people in the estate rallied round and
made sure that a situation like that never comes up again.”
The 16, May 2008 pipeline explosion in
Ijegun community, a suburb of Lagos, readily comes to mind. The
explosion took place after a bulldozer, working on a road construction
project, accidentally struck an oil pipeline, leading to serious
fireball that consumed many lives.
The Nation gathered that residents of
the areas where NNPC pipelines pass through now live in constant fear,
daily praying to God to spare them of a repeat of the 2008 Ijegun
pipeline fire accident.
Meanwhile, officials of NNPC returned to
Tunde Alabi and other streets affected by the strange find on Thursday
to commence the evacuation of the fuel from the wells. According to Mr.
Jolaosho Taofeek, Financial Secretary of the residents’ association,
NNPC officials arrived the area early Thursday to commence work. “NNPC
officials came this morning, and they have been going round to evacuate
the fuel from the wells”, Taofeek disclosed.
However, efforts to speak with NNPC
officials were futile, as they refused to comment on the matter. One of
them, who refused to disclose his identity, said the team does not have
the mandate to speak with the press.
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