From the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway end leading directly into Arepo, everything looks quiet. With such a false appearance, you will think that nothing is happening in that little village called Arepo, which you are about driving into. As you branch off the express road and head into Arepo, you will see a filling station by your right and a row of shops. You will see many more shops as you drive down the washed out road. Arepo had no road at all until about five years ago. Is it even up to five years? What it had then was a dusty patch which passed off as a road. Until journalists arrived there about nine years ago, Arepo was a rustic community peopled by those living in mud houses. Now things have changed, with beautiful houses dotting the Arepo landscape. In Arepo today, there may be no fewer than 25 estates, with the Journalists’ Estate Phases 1 & 11 leading the pack. Arepo is fast developing and it has become popular within a short time. It has all what it takes to rival Lekki in Lagos State.
But and this is a big but, the problem is that of vandals. Arepo can be loosely translated in English as where oil is found. It is not that oil was found in Arepo; no not at all. The only nexus between it and oil is that a pipeline passes through the village. The System 2B Pipeline has been in existence for years, but it has suddenly dawned on some criminals that they have been living close to a goldmine without reaping from it. What benefit they want to reap from their proximity to the pipeline other than regular supply of petroleum products, I don’t know.
Arepo is bordered by the sea and the pipeline passes through this sea. But the daredevil vandals are not bothered. Times without number, they have vandalised the pipeline to siphon fuel. Those who live in that axis know what they go through virtually on a daily basis because of these vandals’ activities. Most nights, pungent smell of petrol waft in the air as if there is a refinery nearby. At such times, you don’t need to be told that these vandals are at work. The smell is so strong that it can leave those with respiratory disorder breathless. Only God knows the number of people that may have suffered heart seizure from inhaling this pungent fuel smell.
We are now at the mercy of these vandals whose illegal activities the government seems not to have an answer to. With the Arepo vandals virtually declaring a war against society, the people living there are in for a hell of a time. The vandals have stepped up their illegal activities, hitting the System B2 Pipeline at will. In August, last year, they did not only vandalise the pipeline, they also killed three officials of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). Last Saturday, they hit the pipeline again.
These attacks cannot be brushed aside with a wave of the hand because of their security implication. If the vandals can be so bold as to attack the Arepo pipeline twice in five months, it means that they may strike again in the nearest future if nothing is done to curtail them now. Besides, they have constituted themselves to a menace to Arepo residents. Sooner than later, we may be in a situation where vandals and security agents will be shooting themselves on the streets of Arepo just as smugglers and Customs do on some major roads in the country.
If government has not been paying serious attention to the security of the Arepo pipeline and those living around the place, it is high time it reconsidered its stand because of the seriousness of the case at hand. A few years ago, the government deployed troops in Arepo to deter the vandals. The soldiers rather than move to the pipeline site, stationed themselves at the gate leading into the Journalists’ Estate Phase 1, which is far from the pipeline. They were there for months, yet it made no difference because they saw it as an opportunity to make money.
The government should be concerned with what is happening at Arepo or else, it will be confronted with a problem that may not be easy to solve in future if nothing concrete is done now to stop these vandals. I have a strong feeling that this vandalism have been going on for long and ever before the opening up of Arepo. Then because everywhere was a bush it was easy for the vandals and their sponsors to operate. The opening up of the place, as it were, seems to have spoilt business for them, but they are not ready to give up without a fight.
What will it cost government to cut these vandals to size? It will cost it nothing to carry the fight to them in their lair and make them realise that no person or group can hold a nation to ransom. There is no individual or organisation, no matter how powerful or rich that can take on the government. If there is any government might, this is the time to show it in order to stop the Arepo vandals in their tracks before it is too late. They have declared war on the people with their criminal activities and the government cannot fold its arms and watch them perpetrate this heinous crime with relish. Except if we are saying we don’t have a government.
The Sultan’s homily
The Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar does not pull punches. If he wants to say something, he goes straight to the point, without beating about the bush. He does not believe in rubbing people on the head when there is a serious issue which deserves urgent attention to thrash out. Not once, not twice, he has spoken on the problems of the North.
And on each occasion, he has been forthright and candid in his assessment, telling his people that the problem is more with them than outsiders. The North, he believes, should look inwards in solving its problems instead of blaming others for where the region is today. There is no better time to tell the North the truth than now and there is no better person to do that than the Sultan.
To be sure, the North like its southern counterpart has a lot of problems. But while the South seems to appreciate the enormity of its problems, the North appears to be comfortable with what the Sultan rightly described as its self-inflicted problems. The region is not prepared to do anything about its problems, but is busy looking for scape-goats. To the average Northerner, the region’s problems are located in what they have come to see as the South’s bid to ‘lord’ it over the nation.
If that assertion is true,then the North has itself to blame because for years the region ‘lorded’ it over the South. Since the amalgamation of the Northern and Southern protectorates in 1914, the North has been the elder brother in what some perceive as a forced union by the British imperialists led by Lord Lugard. The North had everything going for it before and immediately after the amalgamation. Even up till as recent as 1999, the North was in full control of the power structure.
It may not have done well in commerce, but with power, it had everything. That the North is where it is today is not the fault of anybody, but that of itself. ‘’The fault is not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings”, says Shakespeare. The North’s problems became compounded about four years ago with the Boko Haram menace. Rather than come together to fight the Islamic sect, which appears bent on destabilising the country at all costs, Northern leaders are speaking from both sides of the mouth.
They say one thing today and tomorrow, they take a different position on the same matter. The question is are Northern leaders serious about solving the Boko Haram riddle? If they are, they are on the way to resolve the region’s security challenge as well as revive the age-long brotherly love between the North and South, because let’s face it many Southerners have fled that region, which they once considered home, for security reasons.
