By Chris Otaigbe
Nigeria may be watching a catastrophe of unprecedented proportion unfold if the National Assembly continues its kid-glove approach to the ongoing feud between Tank Farm Owners and Satellite Town residents.
An ad-hoc committee had been set up by the House of Representatives to look into the petition by the residents of the affected communities on the threat posed by the Tank Farms to their lives and properties.
On Wednesday, July 22, 2020, a public hearing was held in the Red Chamber at which residents of Satellite Town in Ijegun area of Lagos State called for the relocation of the petroleum tank farms in the area, claiming they posed a threat to lives and property.
Making the appeal, on behalf of the residents, at the investigative hearing organized by an Ad hoc Committee of the House of Representatives on incessant explosions in the area, in Abuja, was the Chairman of the Satellite Town Forum, Mr Michael Imitimi.
According to Imitimi, Satellite town is a residential area and the primary responsibility of government is to protect the lives and property of the people.
He said Satellite Town had been a residential area since 1976 after it was earmarked and gazetted in 1975.
But the peace and serenity enjoyed by the residents began its gradual destruction when they started seeing the building of tank farms in the community in 2012. The ugly development has caused them lots of problems, trauma and deaths.
There is a short road, he said, that links the town, the tank farms and eight other villages near the town and each time those big trucks come in hundreds to the area, residents always found themselves at the mercy of the farm owners.
“We have other eight villages across the water and we just have one seven-meter road that leads to the tank farm and the community. Trucks come in hundreds and in chains and we can remember the fire incident in Onitsha; only one truck had multiplied effects and people died. These trucks are ranging from 33,000 to 78,000 metric tons. The issue before us is this: who has given this approval in a residential area? The last incident that happened claimed lives; it is a very bad situation and we will not accept it. It is our duty to live and when injustice becomes the law, then resistance becomes inevitable. We are appealing to the House not to allow a reoccurrence. These tank farms must be relocated,” he said.
Residents of Ijegun have consistently complained of too many tankers using community roads in order to access tank farms. Those living in the area have complained of gridlock as a result of the traffic. There are also fire risks from potential accidents.
Those living nearby have also complained that storage facilities were built too close to houses.
In defence of the Tank-farm owners, Mr Adebowale Olujimi, Chairman, Ijegun-Egba Tank-farm Owners and Operators Association, told the committee that the owners duly obtained approval from all relevant authorities before the farms were built in 2013.
In 2013, he said the association spent N13 million on access road rehabilitation and N350 million on road construction to the tank farms, adding that between 2014 and 2017, N147.5 million was spent for the rehabilitation of Marwa and Chipset roads in the area.
He said that the association had spent N2bn addressing pressing infrastructural deficit in the area, including a fire station.
With over N2trn in assets, coupled with the servicing of loans from various institutions, Olujimi said a relocation of the tank farm would be a great shock to investors and financial institutions.
According to him, 25% of national petroleum product comes from the tank farms and recommended that the Marwa Road, which is the only access road, be expanded to ease traffic and enhance security plus installation of a central fire station in Ijegun to further assure the community of security of lives and property.
The Chairman of the Ijegun-Egba Tank Farm Owners and Operators Association argued that his members contributed to the economy by way of revenue through taxes, levies and charges to the federal, state and local governments, where the storage facilities were located.
He also stated that the tank farms at Ijegun and Satellite Town in Lagos played pivotal parts in petroleum distribution in Nigeria, accounting for over 25% national petroleum product distribution, with a combined storage capacity of over 600 million litres.
Over 40% of petroleum products to the northern part of the country, Olujimi claimed, comes from the Ijegun tank farms. “Considering the enormous and huge cost of tank farms construction, and having a collective investment asset of over N2tn, are we to forfeit these assets to rebuild another one in another environment? A relocation of tank farms from Ijegun will be a great shock to both the investors and financiers.” He submitted.
Speaking on behalf of the House Ad-hoc Committee, The Chairman of the committee, Mr Sergius Ogun, said the House was out to ensure the safety of lives and property in the area.
According to the Legislator, the tank farm owners got approvals “and you people who are residents, the Town Planning (Authority) also approved your houses that are there. The tank-farm owners pay tax, not to a spirit, but to the government. But we cannot shave the head of the Lagos State Government in its absence. That is why the recommendation is that we are going to Lagos and meet with all stakeholders,” he added.
In its response, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) advised against a swift relocation of tank farms from their current locations along Ijegun, Kirikiri areas in Lagos and other parts of the country in order to avoid dislocation in the supply and distribution chain of petroleum products across the country.
In a press release issued by the NNPC Group General Manager (GGM), Group Public Affairs Division (GPAD), Dr. Kennie Obateru, on behalf of the Managing Director of the Corporation, Mallam Mele Kyari, the NNPC GGM, GPAD stated that NNPC was not averse to the relocation of the petroleum products tank farms and depots sited in residential areas but would rather that some time is allowed to achieve the full rehabilitation of the refineries and the completion of the Dangote Refinery to enable the nation exit fuel importation before their relocation.
The GMD who was represented by the corporation’s Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Umar Ajiya, told the committee that the tank farms and depots were a major artery for receiving and distributing imported petroleum products to all parts of the country and that their abrupt relocation could trigger a crisis not only in the Downstream Sector but also in the nation’s economy in general.
“We are not opposed to the yearnings of the communities or the relocation of the tank farms and depots, but we want it to be done in phases because of the huge financial commitments by the stakeholders. If they are relocated abruptly, even the banking sector would be affected because of the loans they granted for the establishment of the depots,” the GMD stated.
While inaugurating the Committee, earlier, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila said the Ad-hoc Committee was set up to investigate the concerns expressed by the residents in order to have a fair assessment of the situation.
Represented by the House Deputy Minority Leader, Hon. Tobi Okechukwu, the Speaker acknowledged that tank farms and depots were a critical component of the Downstream Petroleum Sector and assured that the House would look at the issue holistically and make a decision in the public interest.
He decried NNPC’s inability to distribute petroleum products through the pipelines due to incessant vandalism, which has made products distribution by tankers over long distances a hazard to the society.
Gbajabiamila also acknowledged that the tanks served a purpose, but expressed safety concern.
“We cannot continue to ignore the undeniable fact that the location of many of these tank farms in places of residence or close to areas of high traffic represents a clear and present risk to the people that live and work in those places,” he said.
Chaired by Hon. Sergius Ogun, the committee was set up a sequel to petitions by the residents of Ijegun, Kirikiri and other areas in Lagos State on the dangers posed by the operations of depots and tank farms to their respective communities.
At the end of the deliberation, the committee resolved to visit the area for assessment and reconvene another meeting to resolve the matter.
An appraisal of the Legislative deliberation of the matter does not necessarily bring comfort to the residents who had gone to seek succour from the Legislators, against Agents and administrators of the present danger they are forced to live with daily.
To be fair, it would bother on near impossible to ask the Tank-farm owners to relocate their storage tanks somewhere else away from the area they currently occupy. However, against the odds facing them now, derived from the growing discontent of the residents against them, it may have to be a necessary investment or adjustment they would have to make. One hopes that the Tank-farm owners do not find themselves in a situation where they lose all their investment to a revolt by the residents.
Before 2012, the residents enjoyed the peace of normal residents anywhere in the state until the Downstream boom of 2012, which was also characterized by monumental corruption. a development that revealed how some unscrupulous marketers were making bogus claims on fanthom Petroleum Products supplies.
It is sad that the many occurrences of a pipeline explosion and the untold damages and loss of lives they leave in their wake were not strong a point for the Legislators to build their concern. Paying lip service to that concern is not enough as illustrated in the body language of the Assemblymen whose sympathy seemed to lean more in the direction of the Tank-farm owners whose trillions of naira investment would be at risk in the event that the Legislators accede to the request of the aggrieved residents.
From every perspective imaginable, every day those Tank farms run its Petro-product operations, hundreds of thousands of lives along with billions of private properties including small and medium scale enterprises are in danger.
According to the Residents Association Chairman, each time these trucks bearing a minimum of 33,000 litres of Petrol come, they don’t come alone, they come in chains. In other words, they can be more than two at any point in time and they all pass the only narrow road residents have to pass through.
So, what it means is that, should a truck accident, similar to the one that claimed a countless number of cars and lives, occur on that narrow passage, it means the catastrophe that would consume that community would be many times the number of trucks in the chain, more than Otedola Bridge Petro-Truck disaster.
If the table were to turn, would the Tank-farm owners with all their wealth and exposure, agree to have someone build petrol depots within their residential area. Would the Legislator love to have a Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) depot next door?
Without mincing words, the House of Reps should prevail on both the Tank-farm owners and the NNPC management to look for the money to commence evacuation and relocation of all Tank-farms and other allied Petroleum product storage depots including Petro-product conveying pipes anywhere in Lagos to Virgin areas in the state or nearby state and fence off such designated zones as far as a minimum of 50 kilometres. At the beginning of such a facility, provision should be made for both zonal office and accommodation for security Agencies to forestall any illegal Land sales around that area, let alone illegal pipeline vandalism.
While this solution may seem way off to some weak minds, it remains the major option on the table for the federal government if it is serious about protecting the lives and property of Nigerians.
Otherwise, the nation may wake up one morning to a Petro-product laden explosion, the catastrophe of which may combine the popular Jesse community pipeline explosion, the Otedola Bridge Truck fire and many more similar pipeline and Petro-Truck accidents, Nigeria has witnessed all in one, all visited on these poor residents. God forbid!
