A truck of adulterated petroleum products was recovered by officials of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps from unidentified vandals on Thursday, June 5, 2014 at Obadoore, along Ijegun Iba road in the Alimosho Local Government Area, Lagos.
The petroleum product was packed in 48 sacks, each of which was said to contain nothing less than 200 litres.
The NSCDC public relations officer, Mr. Chibuzor Mefor confirmed the seizure.
It was also revealed that it took a couple of hours before the truck could be towed from the swampy point.
The driver of the towing vehicle, Abaiye Yemisi, said: “We dug closely to locate where the pipe was tampered with and spent hours before we were able to remove the truck from the swamp. Their intention was to make the recovery of the truck difficult.”
Mr. Ikemefuna Donatus, the NSCDC commandant in the state, said the information they got helped them to thwart the vandals’ plan.
“After information reached us that a syndicate was hovering in the area, we mounted surveillance for two days before the adulterated PMS loaded truck was impounded from the vandals. They took to their heels on sighting officials. The way the oil was packaged shows that vandals are going scientific in carrying out the onerous act,” he said.
The commandant called on security agencies, community leaders, private organisations and citizens to assist the corps in putting an end to vandalism and oil adulteration.
“We want to send a warning to all petroleum adulterators to stop adulterating oil. We have been mandated to prosecute any culprits. We need the cooperation of other security agencies, community leaders and private bodies. We also appeal to government at the three tiers to provide us with vehicles and other state-of-arts arms to fight these monsters,” he said.
