AN Environmental rights activist and Executive Director of the Youth and Environmental Advocacy Center (YEAC), Fyneface Dumnamene Fyneface, has caution against linking the recent explosion on the Trans-Niger Delta Pipeline in Bodo, Gokana Local Council of Rivers State to the ongoing political crisis in the state.
Rather, Fyneface, in an interview seen by TheCardinal.ng, said recent explosions in the state could be due to equipment failure and not about ethnic tensions or sabotage, as being speculated.
He dismissed reports linking recent explosions in the state to the lingering political crisis, noting: “Ogoniland does not belong to either the Ikwerre or Ijaw ethnic nationalities.”
Fyneface insisted that only the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) could determine whether the explosion was caused by equipment failure or sabotage.
He called for a thorough investigation to ascertain the exact cause and prevent future incidents, even as he decried the regular occurrence of oil spills and pipeline explosions in the Niger Delta.
The activist stated: “A lot of these things have been happening and more are still going to happen, because a lot of these pipelines are already bad, already weak. And divestment is going on, where the multinational oil companies are handing over these facilities to indigenous companies who even lack the technological capacity and finances to run them.
“So, we are going to have more explosions of this nature, more equipment failures of this nature and more oil spills in the future, because the system has not been maintained the way it ought to be.”
He stated that the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) and Shell, which operates the pipelines, are responsible for maintaining the aging infrastructure, which have been in place for over 60 years and are prone to failure, “bursting and deflating like balloons when there is heavy pressure transporting crude oil to the export terminal in Bonny.”
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