AREPO: HURIWA WANTS FG ;STATES TO PROTECT PIPELINES JOINTLY

Vexed by the intermittent fire outbreaks and the consequential death of hundreds of thousands of Nigerians in the last couple of years from Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation's (NNPC) pipelines across Nigeria, the National Assembly has been tasked to introduce necessary legislations to compel state governments to protect petroleum pipelines as national assets. HURIWA said attacks on petrol pipelines are grave threats to the national security and must be viewed as such.

In a media statement in reaction to the deadly NNPC pipelines explosion at Arepo Village in the Obafemi – Owode Local Government Area of Ogun State which reportedly claimed 25 lives, HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS' ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA) said strong national legislations and legal frameworks must be introduced and enforced to bring into being effective and efficient joint federal and state government NNPC's pipelines protection and monitoring teams to prevent the incessant attack on the nation's petrol pipeline by hoodlums.

HURIWA advised state Governments to see it as part of their constitutional duties to put proactive measures to prevent incessant cases of petroleum pipelines' vandalism perpetrated by hoodlums in their areas of jurisdiction just as the Rights group tasked the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation to install state of the art standard security infrastructure to secure the petrol pipelines which are national assets.

National Coordinator Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko and National media officer Miss. Zainab Yusuf of the HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS' ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA challenged President Good luck Jonathan and the 36 State governors to save Nigeria the international embarrassment of the notoriety of being one of the only nations in the World where pipeline vandalism and crude oil theft take place constituting grave national economic adversity to the economic life of Nigeria as a political entity.

HURIWA, a democracy friendly Non-governmental organization in the statement stressed thus; “We hereby appeal to the National Assembly to look at ways and means of bringing into being, strong legislation to compel the Federal government to actively partner with the 36 State governments to jointly set up and fund security teams on permanent basis to secure Nigeria's pipelines from the attacks of vandals and hoodlums. The continuous high rate of deaths recorded from pipeline vandalism shows that the Federal and state governments are failing in their constitutional role to protect lives and property of the citizenry”.

HURIWA further called on government to quickly fix the fast declining and grossly inefficient security infrastructure across the country to save the nation from bleeding to death as a result of crude oil theft and petrol pipelines' vandalism.