Chairman, Senate Committee on Petroleum (Downstream), Senator Magnus Abe
By Dele Ogbodo
The chairman, Senate Committee on Petroleum (Downstream), Senator Magnus Abe, Tuesday ordered the Inspector General of Police (IG), Mr. Mohammed Abubakar, to produced the member staff of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) that were recently kidnapped in the course of carrying out maintenance work on a vandalise pipeline at the Arepo in Ogun State.
Abe said all those involved in the saga must be brought to book.
Abe made the disclosure in an interactive forum with the management staff of NNPC on resolving the lingering fuel crises across the country led by its Executive Director, Public Services, Mr. Peter Madu.
He stated that however that the corporation must expedite action on its Turn Around Maintenance (TAM), so as to avoid future fuel scarcity.
He said “the senate is concerned about the preservation of the country’s pipelines and nobody should be allowed to get away with such criminal acts. The IG must bring to book all those responsible for disrupting the repairs of the pipelines in Arepo.”
In his remarks, Madu told the Senate committee that activities by hoodlums at the Arepo depot disrupted repair works at the incident and affected flow of the products.
He said: “As a result of the attack on the crew of NNPC that went to effect repairs, three of our men including an engineer were abducted and yet to be found and this was aside three currently receiving treatment.”
On the effect of the recent flooding along the Lokoja-Abuja Road, which has hindered movement of vehicles up North, Madu said alternative arrangement to use other routes had been put in place.
He said: “It would take longer turn around for the tankers to get to their destinations and this has been responsible for the current hiccups noticed last week.”
He assured that there was enough quantity of petroleum products, saying: “We have beefed up our depots in Suleja, Minna, Jos, Gusau and Kano. Kaduna refinery has pumped four million litres to ease supply.”
He hinted that he was unaware of any planned threat of strike by NUPENG and PENGASAN expected to commence Wednesday, stating that NNPC had not been notified of any such threat.