Seaport and Terminal Operators Association of Nigeria (STOAN) has described the concentration of petroleum tank farms in Apapa, Lagos as sitting on a set of gun powder which can explode at anytime.
Chairman of STOAN, Princess Vicky Hashtrup in a chat with Shipping Position Daily last week noted that in view of the security challenges in the country, the Federal Government must relocate the tank farms in order to avoid them being used to target innocent citizens.
Seaport and Terminal Operators Association of Nigeria (STOAN) has described the concentration of petroleum tank farms in Apapa, Lagos as sitting on a set of gun powder which can explode at anytime.
Chairman of STOAN, Princess Vicky Hashtrup in a chat with Shipping Position Daily last week noted that in view of the security challenges in the country, the Federal Government must relocate the tank farms in order to avoid them being used to target innocent citizens.
Princess Hashtrup recalled that the recent explosion that occurred at the Folawiyo tank farm on Creek Road, Apapa could have resulted into a nationwide disaster.
"The concentration of tank farms in Apapa portends doom, it’s like we are sitting on a keg of gun powder, you know what happened in Folawiyo two weeks ago, if God had not been on our side and taken charge of that situation, the whole of Apapa would have been engulfed in fire by now"
"The permanent solution is for some of these tank farms to be relocated" she stated.
Also during a chat with Shipping Position Daily, Chairman of Association of Maritime Truck Owners (AMARTO) Chief Remi Ogungbemi said that tank farms are the major contributing factor to the traffic gridlock that stakeholders are experiencing in Apapa presently.
He however said that the marketers are not to be blamed. "I will not even blame the tankers, I will blame the people that sat down somewhere and approved the location of these tank farms in the first place, ordinarily we are not supposed to have these tank farms where the ports are, it has choked up all the environment, they should have used a pipe to direct the product outside Lagos, either Ibadan expressway or any other place, but to allow the tankers start coming to Apapa is not the best, so I am putting the blame on the people that approved the citation of the tank farms within the port environment".
Ogungbemi said that pipes should have been used to pipe the product outside the port environment, so that tankers can go there and lift their fuel.
"They can use pipes to pipe it directly from the ships, when the ship arrive they just connect the hose to the ship and through the pipe it can even go to Epe, it can go to Badagry and anywhere else within the suburb of Lagos, it’s like we are just putting all our eggs in one basket, if the person carrying the basket should fall then all the eggs will fall off, people in authority should consider the operation impact before they cite any project at any particular place" he told Shipping Position Daily.
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