Following recent reports of the arrest of some terrorists who are suspected to be members of the dreaded Boko Haram sect with sophisticated ammunitions around the Ijora area of Lagos, owners of petroleum products tank farms in the popular Coconut, Kirikiri and Folawiyo axis of Apapa in Lagos are currently operating in trepidation.
Shipping Position Daily findings at the depots last week revealed that many of them have suspended night operations for fear of being attacked by the terrorists.
Following recent reports of the arrest of some terrorists who are suspected to be members of the dreaded Boko Haram sect with sophisticated ammunitions around the Ijora area of Lagos, owners of petroleum products tank farms in the popular Coconut, Kirikiri and Folawiyo axis of Apapa in Lagos are currently operating in trepidation.
Shipping Position Daily findings at the depots last week revealed that many of them have suspended night operations for fear of being attacked by the terrorists.
Apart from this, our correspondent’s findings showed that security at the depot has been beefed-up, especially at the water fronts, while majority of the depots no longer allow petroleum tankers to pass the night inside the tank farms in order to discourage the possibility of using them as booby traps.
It would be recalled that Folawiyo tank farm had also last week issued a document to concerned stakeholders notifying them of its suspension of night operations. Sources at the Kirikiri tank farms also confirmed that vehicles are no longer allowed to pass through the popular Nigerian Prison Service gate through the Nigerian Navy compound.
Confirming the development to our correspondent, an operator; Comrade Chris Iyasere explained that loading activities now commence at the depots at 8 am and all operations end by 6 pm each day.
“No more night loading, it is one of the security measures that we have taken, every depot is expected to close by latest 6pm, another thing we did is that we don’t allow any truck to park inside the depot overnight as it used to be before”.
“If at the close of work you have not loaded your product then you take your truck away, because there is the possibility of somebody coming to plant bomb inside the truck, so we don’t allow it anymore” Iyasere explained.
He said that the rowdiness that is usually seen outside the tank farm has reduced drastically so as to ensure that they are not caught unawares. He said that majority of the people that are seen outside the tank farms are marketers who want to carry their product.
“They have also been sensitized about the restrictions, so every one of them is always at alert as they go about, they identify any strange face. It was the security committee that came up with this idea and martial out the measures”, he added.
Iyasere said that many of the tank farms have increased their loading arms at the gantry and that “where they are using two before; some of them have increased it to three or four in order to push out more volume of product”.
“Loading of products now starts as early as 8o’clock in the morning because they have many trucks to cover, before 6pm they have achieved a lot so that customers will not complain. Before any truck gets to the depot, we must ascertain that this is a known customer, because almost every customer that comes to load at the depot is a known customer”.
Also confirming the development in a telephone chat with our correspondent, chairman of the stakeholders committee at the Ibru-Ibafon tank farms, Mr. Geoffrey Okorie said that security has been tightened at the depots.
Discussion about this post