•Apata NNPC depot in Ibadan
Life has been hellish for the residents of Apata area and its environs in Ibadan, Oyo State Capital. The water stream which lead Apata community to extreme end of Nihort (National Horticultural Research Institute), in Odo-Ona area and beyond covering about 5 kilometres have degraded by wastes from petroleum products from the NNPC depot in the area.
LiveTimes gathered that residents of Oladele phase 2 have been falling sick because of the wastes. And other residents living along the stream are not excluded. According to president of Atio community, residents have been stooling, vomiting while some suffered convulsion and hospital reports reveal that it is due to odour of the wastes and pollutants from the stream.
The affected communities are Atio which consist of adjoining communities like Temidire, Adebisi, Isokan, Oladele and Akilapa communities and lead to Odo-Ona area at Nihort.
According to residents of this area, the water stream which was formerly used for drinking, and a stream where the residents did fetched water, swim and get life animals for food has been polluted by spilled oil from NNPC depot in the area. Today, the water is not drinkable, usable for other home use and all life creatures in the water have died. Not only the water pollution, there is incidence of gas flaring from the depot.
According to chairman of Temidire Landlord association who is simply identified as Mr. Aderemi lamented to LiveTimes over the Corporation’s unchallant attitude of being less concerned over the plights NNPC Apata deport mete on members of the community.
Aderemi lamented that there had been complaints from the twelve communities in the area called ‘Atio’ on dangerous activities of NNPC but nothing has been done to find lasting solution.
“We have been in this struggle for over 15 years ago. During Lam Adesina’s era, government officials came here and during Ladoja’s era but nothing has been done. There was even a time we had fire outbreak as a result of their oil spillage. This was caused by people scooping oil from the oil tanker.
“We usually experience oil spillage here. According to information we gathered, the spillage mostly are from residue of stored petroleum bye products or wastes. At times, NNPC mix the wastes with chemicals to abate the odour but yet it is another pollution to the environment that have been making residents fall sick.
“In December, 2017, we visited the State House of Assembly to lodge complaints but they were on recession. We dropped letter but due to death of the Speaker, Hon. Michael Adeyemo, we didn’t hear anything again.
“Later in January 2018, we visited Ministry of Environment and the officials came here and they saw degradation of the environment by themselves. The officials from the ministry met with NNPC workers together with us and in the meeting, NNPC was admonished to do the right thing.
“After several reports, the pollution stopped late last year until this year the smell and pollution of our stream returned. We have invited Broadcasting Corporation of Oyo State (BCOS) and it was reported in the television station. The TV crew came here and the reporters needed to be covering their noses because of the odour. It is disheartening that NNPC has never done any Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the community but rather further make life uncomfortable for us.
All effort to meet with the management of the corporation in Ibadan were to no avail. But after many efforts, LiveTimes spoke with NNPC’s national spokesman, Mr. Ndu Ughamadu on telephone.
Ughaduma said the Corporation is doing everything possible to find lasting solution to the crisis but maintained that the incident of oil spillage is normal because pipeline seldom breaks due to several reasons but promised that NNPC will find solution to it.
