THE abject poverty in which Nigerians wallow was pointedly advertised on Monday, April 3, 2006 when there was a rupture in a Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) pipeline at Oke-Odo on the outskirts of Lagos. As a result of this rupture, petrol oozed freely into the surrounding area and before long a community of scavengers made up of men, women and children invaded the area with pots and pans, buckets and jerry cans, as everyone helped themselves to the commodity. Unarmed Police, Army and other civil defence groups arrived at the scene but were pelted with stones and forced to retreat. The pipeline itself was laid in an exposed erosion-prone area near high tension wires of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN). Many persons were injured in the melee that followed, with some 40 persons collapsing from fume inhalation. At the same time, residents fearful for their lives, fled the area.
Upon the discovery of the rupture the landlords association of the area promptly alerted the NNPC about what had happened to one of its delivery pipelines. Although NNPC officials claimed that they promptly disabled the line, it took more than 24 hours for them to respond to what is by all accounts a grave emergency involving volatile petrol. The landlords association went further to say that they had made numerous entreaties in the past two years to NNPC about the state of the pipelines in their area, without eliciting a single response.
In looking at the incident, several things come to mind. Firstly as a result of previous disasters involving petroleum products in which hundreds of lives were lost, we would have expected that by now Nigerians would have become wise to the destructive nature of uncontrolled petroleum. The fact that Nigerians in spite of this still swarmed to the venue to collect free petrol can only be attributed to poverty. The truth is that many Nigerians are so poor these days that safety considerations come second in their quest for survival. There is an organisation called the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA). Surely the petrol leakage at Oko-Odo should have been of interest to it. It is not known whether that organisation was at the scene of the incident.
Secondly, the lukewarm response of the NNPC should be deprecated. Its officials must know the nature of what they are dealing with and the terrible consequences that can occur when things go wrong. Nigeria being an oil producing country of considerable standing should by now have evolved fast response capabilities to manage incidents like this. It is a fact that many NNPC delivery pipes have become too old and need to be replaced. For a start, pipelines should not be laid in heavily populated areas and where encroachment has occurred due to urbanisation, the pipelines should be re-routed. A right-of-way ought to be created for the pipelines with adequate written warning along their routes advising intruders to stay away.
The NNPC must use this opportunity to examine its community relations and oil field practices. When landlords take it upon themselves to warn the corporation of impending danger, the NNPC should formally respond with gratitude and do something about the reported condition. There ought to be a continuous programme of pipeline rehabilitation to maintain integrity and not just profits.
Finally, we must warn our people for the umpteenth time to run away from liquid fuel. Nigeria has been lucky again. Indeed a match stick or cigarette butt could have set off an inferno whose casualty rate would have exceeded the 1,000 who perished in a similar incident in 1998 in Jesse, Delta State.