•Government’ s decision to revamp oil pipelines is welcome, but …
Last week, it was yet again time for our officials to lament the virtual collapse of the country’s fuel distribution pipelines and the incalculable harm that the use of tankers to transport fuel has done to the people and the economy. This time around, it was Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Oil), Senator Heineken Lokpobiri, bemoaning to the visiting Corps Marshal of the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), Shehu Mohammed, the recurring petrol tanker explosions that have caused significant loss of lives and property across the country.
He reportedly told his visitor: “Ordinarily, petroleum products should be transported through pipelines to depots closer to consumers, but many of our pipelines have exceeded their lifespan…” The situation, he noted, is what has forced the industry to rely primarily on road transport for distributing petrol and other petroleum products.
He spoke of how the absence of an enabling legislation had, until the coming of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA), crippled any prospects of investment in the sector and how things are changing. Finally, the minister spoke of ongoing discussions aimed at ensuring an efficient distribution system in the downstream sector, which would include the use of technology to safeguard pipelines from vandalism.
“We are determined to prevent further loss of lives and property by creating a safer, more efficient petroleum distribution system,” he reportedly told his visitor.
We welcome the government’s decision to revamp the depots as indeed the ancillary pipelines infrastructure. It is certainly a grave matter that the country’s massive investments in those depots and other notable infrastructure, particularly the vast and sprawling network of pipelines, have been laid to waste through criminal indifference and collusion by officials. We are talking here of 21 depots, nine in the North and 12 in the South, that once served disparate parts of the country. Nigerians will in particular recall the beehive of activities in such prominent depots such as Ejigbo (Lagos), Mosinmi (Ogun) Ibadan, Ilorin and Suleija in the western axis; those of Benin, Port Harcourt, Aba, Enugu, Calabar, Makurdi on the eastern flank, as indeed those in Kano, Gombe and Maiduguri and other far northern states – all of them belonging to the Pipelines and Products Marketing Company Limited (PPMC), a wholly owned subsidiary of Nigerian National Petroleum Company Ltd (NNPCL).
That these vital assets, procured at humongous costs to the treasury, currently lie in ruins and their sites overgrown with weeds following their abandonment by the NNPCL, with the latter yielding the space to private depot owners, is testament to the infinite capacity of our officials to mismanage a public trust. The story of the pipelines network which serves them and thus saved the country of the daily nightmares of haulage of products through the inadequate but equally ill-maintained roads is even worse. That they have all been vandalised, leaving the country at the mercy of fuel tankers and with it the dire consequences in the not-too-infrequent tanker accidents and their associated deaths and destruction, speaks to our legendary propensity for self-harm.
No doubt, the minister has made the right call. That would certainly save the country money – lots of it – in distribution and other logistical costs, aside the safety issues and the preservation of the roads. In fact, this newspaper has long before now made the same call about revamping the fuel pipelines infrastructure as holding the key to turning, not just the face of fuel distribution around, but also of its efficiency and sustainability.
What remains to be seen is how far the removal of the so-called legislative impediment – which the minister admitted – will go to address the problem. For, as always, the problem is often the government that makes so much song about letting the NNPCL play as an entity worthy of its name, but baulks when it comes to allowing it to make its decisions as a truly commercial entity.
This time around, we can only hope that the government will finally walk its talk.
