The House said there is need to relocate tank farms from residential areas, because of the grave risk it pose to residents.
The speaker, Femi Gbajabiamila stated this, yesterday, while inaugurating the House Ad-hoc Committee “on the need to relocate tanks farms in residential areas of Ijegun, Kirikiri in Lagos State and other parts of the country. ”
Gbajabiamila said the House is interested in ascertaining how the tank farms came to be in residential areas and how to prevent more disasters arising from them.
According to him, “tank farms across the country serve an essential function. They are stores of economic value and a critical part of the energy distribution infrastructure in the country. However, we cannot continue to ignore the undeniable fact that the location of many of these tank farms in places of residence or close to areas of high traffic represents a clear and present risk to the people that live and work in those places.
” Therefore, the House of Representatives has resolved to investigate how these tank farms came to be in these places, and more importantly, what needs to be done about them to prevent further disaster from occurring on our watch.
“…This is one of those instances where we have a responsibility first to speak, and then to follow through with substantive action to prevent further reoccurrence of catastrophic events that cost lives, destroy livelihoods and decimate the value of assets accumulated over time through hard effort.”
The speaker charged the ad-hoc committee headed by Sergius Ogun to listen to all the conflicting interests in the issue and come up with a solution to the challenge, without creating new ones..
” You are entering into an arena where the investments are enormous, the interests are entrenched and powerful, and where a failure to deliver on your mandate will have outsize consequences long after you have left office,” Gbajabiamila stated.
