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.
