LAGOS – Residents of Isawo community in Ikorodu area of Lagos State have urged the government to build skill acquisition centres to train more youths and redirect their energies from pipeline vandalism.
The residents also said that the lingering fuel scarcity had increase the number of motor vehicles seen in the community looking for where to buy fuel or take it out of the community for sale elsewher.
Mrs Abeke Sonowo, a resident, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that most youths engaged in vandalism of the nation’s assets because they were unemployed.
“With the current lingering fuel scarcity, most youths in our community who were initially not interested in the activities of the vandals have now joined them,’’ Sonowo said.
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She noted that bunkering had taken another dimension by becoming a hidden business unlike when people had petrol station for dealing in oil, saying that now anybody could open a shop and sell fuel.
“The police are not helping matters because their interest is to collect money and allow the vandals to go and be doing their businesses as usual,’’ Sonowo alleged.
Another, who spoke anonymously, said the activities of the vandals needed to be checked using plainclothes security men who probably would have an office in the creeks where vandalism was perpetrated.
“Most of the hoodlums who engaged in vandalism live in the interior parts where the pipelines pass through.
“Government should provide a 24-hour surveillance on the creeks to ensure the safety of the pipelines.
“If not, it will be very difficult to stop them from destroying the nations assets,’’ he said.
Also, a commercial vehicle driver, who does not want his name in print, said the police road blocks were only used to extort money from them instead of checking the crime.
He added that the checkpoints caused gridlock along Isawo road.
“The police use their checkpoints to collect money from us rather than surveying the area for the safety of lives and property and curbing the activities of vandals,’’ he said.
NAN reports that some police officers were seen mounting road blocks along the Isawo road, thereby causing traffic jam.
Isawo is one of the creek communities in Ikorodu where pipeline vandalism was one of the major businesses perpetrated by hoodlums.
Nearby Isawo is another community, Majidun where most of the residents are migrants who know very much about the creeks engaged in fishing business.
But for now, vandalism is also being perpetrated there.
The Nigeria Navy have deployed its officers to various sensitive locations in Isawo and Majidun where the activities of vandals were assumed to be unabated.
Effort to talk to the leader of Isawo community as at the time of this report proved abortive.
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