The Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) has the statutory mandate to protect offshore petroleum pipelines in the country and save them from vandals and other economic saboteurs. However, a three-month investigation conducted by KUNLE AKINRINADE on the vandalisation of pipelines at Isheri Olofin Royal Estate in Alimosho area of Lagos State revealed the connivance of some operatives of the security agency and private guards hired by the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) with pipeline vandals.
THE Commandant of Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) in Lagos State, Alhaji Tajudeen Balogun, is widely regarded as a man of action. In the few months he became the helmsman of the para-military organisation in Lagos, his rating as a no-nonsense minion of law has been swelled by the arrest of cable and pipeline vandals, among other criminals.
Again, on September 3, Balogun, whose Yoruba name translates to ‘generalissimo’, lived up to his name when he made a show of his commitment to route the pipeline vandals in the state. On that day, about 19 nationals of neighbouring Benin Republic were arrested and paraded for alleged theft of more than 50,000 litres of petroleum products. Balogun said the suspects were arrested in a boat in Badagry between August 28 and 30 on their way to Benin Republic.
He said: ”Thirteen of the suspects were picked up in a boat at Badagry on their way from Niger Delta area heading to Benin Republic. Other suspects were arrested at Atlas Cove and Lagos Island. We recovered 300 jerry cans of 30 litres each containing petroleum products.
“We recovered 40 jerry cans of 30 litres each containing diesel and another 40 jerry cans of same litres containing kerosene. We intercepted another Cotonou boat with 118 drums of different products, with each drum containing about 250 litres. We have contacted the NNPC for the evacuation of the products to their depot at Mosinmi in Ogun. All the suspects will be charged to court as soon as investigation is concluded.”
Community at the mercy of vandals
But while Balogun relishes his nemesis on vandals, his binoculars seem to have failed to capture corrupt operatives under his nose, who have been aiding vandals to smash pipelines and steal petroleum products that run into millions of naira in the Olowu area of Isheri Olofin Royal Estate in Alimosho Local Government Area.
For Isheri Olofin Royal Estate, a community comprising mainly low income and middle class residents, it has been five years of constant assault by vandals aided by security agencies. Community leaders and residents who spoke with our correspondent expressed disappointment with the complicit security operatives and NNPC security men involved in the destruction of oil pipelines and theft of fuel in the area, with fear of possible fire outbreak triggered by vandalised pipeline anytime soon.
The massive estate, is divided into three areas—Zone A, B and C. The pipeline that passes through Olowu Street is located in the Zone B area of the poorly developed estate. A number of security operatives have been drafted to the community to protect the facility in recent times. From policemen to soldiers and from naval operatives to security guards hired by NNPC to protect the pipelines, it was sordid tales of vandalisation of pipelines and theft of fuel. But all that, as gathered, temporarily stopped about three years ago after a state-wide military onslaught against vandals until January this year when the vandals resumed their nefarious activities in the estate.
The return of vandals
Sources in the estate revealed how some security guards of a pipeline surveillance firm contracted by the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) worked in cahoots with the pipeline syndicate few weeks after they were employed and posted there. Nemesis, however, caught up with them when they were apprehended by vigilant residents on July 14 this year after they allegedly aided vandals to burst the pipelines, load petrol into three tankers and escaped.
Adejare Brown, a community leader, said: “We have endured the vandals’ activities for about five years now. The whole thing started shortly after we moved into this estate. We did not quite pay much attention until some residents ran into the vandals during one of their operations.
“While we were initially indifferent about their activities, we were constrained to put a stop to them when the threat of fire outbreak stared us in the face, following the exposure of the vandalised pipeline each time the vandals operate, because they don’t properly cover the pipelines back before they hurriedly leave the place.
“There was a respite for three years after soldiers were drafted to repel vandals in Lagos State, following which some private security men contracted by NNPC were deployed to protect the pipelines here.
“Initially when the security men were posted here, they gave a deceitful veneer to their ability to contain the vandals through constant stop and search on vehicles, residents and strict restriction of movement at night. But we never knew that it was all meant to turn our eyes away from their cooperation with the very people who have been vandalising the pipelines and taking away fuel in tankers.
“A few months later, precisely January this year, we were alerted by a man and his wife who were returning from a church programme in the wee hours of a particular day that some men were sighted with their tankers taking fuel from pipelines. The couple also said that they sighted three security men with the vandals.
“We decided to keep a watch on their activities until July 14 this year when the vandals returned. This time, we got wind of their presence and mobilised ourselves to the scene, but they zoomed off on sighting us, while the security men watched as they drove out. But we were able to stop the tanker while the driver and his assistant jumped out of the vehicle and escaped.
“When we accused the NNPC security men, they said the driver of the tanker veered off the Lasu-Igando highway into our estate. They said the tanker broke down and they only helped to push it back into motion. We led them to the pipelines only to discover that fuel was gushing out from a hole they drilled on it and hurriedly covered with waste materials.
“The discovery angered the residents at the scene, and they wanted to lynch the security men. But some of us intervened by asking them to write an undertaking never to engage in such act again. It was then they confessed that they collected the sum of N50,000 from the vandals. We took them and the tanker to the Idimu Police Division, although many of the residents could not trust the police because of how suspects arrested in the past were controversially freed without any investigation carried out.”
According to Brown, the security men did not spend up to 15 minutes at the police station; they were freed, to the chagrin of residents.
“The errant security men returned barely 15 minutes after we left the station and mocked us for wasting our time by taking them to the police, who they claimed would always free them because of the relationship between the syndicate and some policemen at the station.”
The efforts our correspondent made to reach NNPC spokesman, Ndu Ughamadu, were futile as several calls made to his mobile phone went unanswered. A text message sent to his telephone line had also not been replied to at press time.
The brouhaha that followed the complicity of the NNPC’s hired security guards, it was learnt, led to their sack and eventual return of Civil Defence operatives a few days later to protect the pipelines in line with its statutory mandate.
The Nation gathered that to ensure their comfort and diligent discharge of their duties, the Civil Defence men on appeal to the leadership of the estate’s residents’ association renovated an abandoned NNPC security post and furnished the building with mattress and other furniture items for the use of the operatives.
Brown added: “The leader of the NSCDC squad, who claimed that he was well-trained to contain vandals, and had been deployed from the Northern part of the country to secure pipelines in our estate, said he and his men would not be able to stay comfortably at the security post because it was not habitable enough to make their constabulary duty comfortable.
“We were moved by their plight and we quickly raised about N300,000 to renovate the building, including providing modern toilet, bathroom, mattresses, and tiled the place to their satisfaction, hoping that we can heave a sigh of relief from the activities of vandals,” Brown added.
Another sad song
But did the arrival of NSDSC operatives stop vandals from coming to burst the pipeline in the area? Certainly no. Their presence, The Nation gathered, further emboldened vandals. In less than two weeks after the arrival of the NSCSDC operatives, vandals struck again and successfully took away fuel in three tankers, according to sources.
Curiously, the security post manned by a coterie of men of anti-vandalism unit of NSCDC, who were deployed to keep watch on the pipelines and prevent its vandalisation, is just a stone’s throw from the pipelines.
To ensure they have easy access to the oil installation, the syndicate drilled a hole on the pipelines and covered it with a disused tyre, leaves and garbage to prevent petrol from spilling out and giving the place away. This, they did to ensure a steady stealing of fuel from the pipelines each time they come there-most times in the wee hours of the day, while their civil defence operatives accomplices look the other way.
Before the July 14 operation, the vandals had stolen fuel from the pipelines without any hindrance. Three days to the Sallah festival on June 15 this year, which marked the end of Muslim Ramadan fasting period, the vandals stormed the pipelines and left the same way they had been leaving the hole on the pipelines covered with a disused tyre and refuse, to prevent fuel from gushing out after loading the product into three tankers.
It was further gathered that just before the Eid-el-Kabir festival on August 21, the vandals again struck and took away fuel from their ‘colonised’ pipelines in not less than three 50,000-litre capacity tankers, according to residents.
A resident, Oni Adeojo, said: ”They (NSCDC) operatives would usually fire shots in the air to create the impression that they are confronting vandals only for us to wake up to the reality that the notorious vandals operated unhindered and took away fuel in tankers.
“Vandals have become emboldened such that on June 12, they stole fuel from the pipelines and again came two days to Ileya (Eid-el-Kabir) festival, yet, they got away with fuel stolen from the pipelines.”
Worried by the menace of vandals and seeming cluelessness of the minions of law, community leaders in the estate decided to engage the services of operatives of a vigilance group to protect lives and property as well as keep watch over the pipelines and activities of civil defence operatives.
The initiative paid off in the wee hours of August 29, after the die-hard vandals stormed the pipelines in three tankers. They had successfully loaded fuel into three 50,000-litre tankers as usual when the vigilante men sighted them and alerted residents, who wasted no time to rush to the scene. There, they met more than 15 civil defence operatives, more than the number deployed in the community, and drivers of the fuel laden tankers cum vandals.
Surprisingly, the civil defence operatives were said to have freed the drivers and took away two of the tankers, while they reached out to a top official of a branch of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) at NNPC depot in Ejigbo, a Lagos suburb, for a more competent driver to move the third tanker, which was difficult for their operatives to drive, to their Ikeja headquarters.
“We later learnt that the vandals have been settling civil defence operatives with money each time they operate here and that a quarrel over money had resulted in an altercation while the operation lasted, which made the civil defence operatives to call for a reinforcement from their headquarters.
“The release of the tanker drivers and the decision to impound the tankers was a ploy to deceive us from knowing the kind of relationship between the vandals and civil defence corps,” Adeojo added.
Shortage of fuel, loss of job
Like the distraught residents, stakeholders at the Ejigbo NNPC satellite depot are also worried about the development. A source at the depot, who demanded anonymity, disclosed to The Nation that a discreet investigation revealed that some civil defence operatives had acted in compromise with the pipelines syndicate. The result, according to the source, is that, each time vandals struck at the estate or any other area where pipelines are located, tanker drivers at Ejigbo NNPC depot would have little or no job to do as a result of shortage of fuel.
“There are certain litres of fuel pumped into pipelines by NNPC on a daily and weekly basis. Once pipelines are violated by vandals, it would take days for NNPC to restore operations, and the result is that we would have little or no fuel to load at Ejigbo satellite depot, which serves many parts of the country.
“On a normal day, we load up to 120 tankers per day. But when vandals repeated their violation of the pipelines, only six to seven tankers were able to get fuel from our depot. Most tanker drivers, for several days, did not have work to do while the filling stations they were supposed to supply did not have fuel to sell to customers.
“Our leaders who went to the headquarters of NSCDC in Ikeja with the intention to engage the leadership of the organisation on the need to caution its men against aiding vandals were rebuffed,” the source, who asked not to be named said.
Vandals’ gain, country’s loss
While the notorious vandals continue to profit from where they do not sow, the consequences of their actions on pipelines located in Isheri Olofin Royal Estate has been a huge loss to the country. The value of the 12 tankers of fuel (50,000-litre capacity each) stolen between June and August 29 is inimical to the economic interests of the country.
A liter of fuel from the NNPC to marketers costs N133.28 kobo, which means that the total value of the 12 (50,000 litre) tankers is around 600,000 litres in all. A simple multiplication of the 600,000 litres by the unit cost of a litre at N133.28 kobo translates to about N79.9 million.
Contacted penultimate Thursday, the spokesperson of Lagos State Command of NSCDC, Ms Kehinde Bada, absolved operatives of the command of complicity in the attacks on pipelines and fuel theft.
She said: “Our officers could not have been involved in such act. There is no way our men would have aided vandals to steal fuel from pipelines, because we have a crop of well trained and disciplined operatives.
“Our officer, who led the team that foiled the vandals’ operation is an Assistant Commandant, and he was deployed from Abuja to head our anti-vandalism unit. He is a man of integrity and would not be involved in such unlawful conduct.
“Contrary to the allegations, what actually happened during the operation you mentioned on August 28/29 was that our men successfully foiled the vandalisation of the pipelines in the estate and moved the three tankers to our headquarters in Ikeja. The fuel was evacuated yesterday by NNPC officials from Mosinmi depot in Ogun State.
“It is corruption that is fighting back, and that is why all these allegations are being raised against our operations and men.”
