Satellite Town Residents, today, poured out onto the streets, to cry for protection, of the federal government, from the debilitating activities of over 500 tankers that pass through their community carrying fuel from a tank farm depot located there.
The protesters are calling the federal government to relocate the tank farm, from their community, so as to save it from destruction.
There are over 12 tank farms located in the community, from where tankers carry fuel every day. They pass through Marwa road, the major pathway that runs through the heart of the community, to various parts of Lagos. The activities of the tank farms have crippled businesses in some parts of the community and have made the roads impassable.
The residents wearing t-shirts and carrying placards that had various inscriptions walked through the Marwa road calling on the federal government, the Lagos State Government and the Oriade Local Government Development Authority (OLCDA) to come to their rescue.
They carried placards with inscriptions such as: Danger: Save Satellite Town From Tankers, Reckless Tanker Drivers, Save Satellite Town from 24-hour gridlock and they cried “Ramota ( Ramotalai Akinola Hassan), the OLCDA chairlady, come to our help; SanwaOolu come to our help”.
The protesters who matched through the frontage of the OLCDA on Marwa road sought audience with Mrs Hassan, but the Oriade charlady who came out to speak to the protesters said the solution to the problems was beyond her office. She pointed the residents to Alausa and the FG.
One of the residents, Mrs Grace Okwazo, who spoke to eWorldnews, said it is difficult to quantify the sufferings of satellite town residents on account of the activates of the tank farms and their tankers.
“Our businesses are crumbling, due to bad roads caused by the tankers and our children who go to school are having a nightmare passing through the roads which have become terribly bad and the gridlock they cause”, she said.
”Our lives and properties are being damaged by the tankers”, lamented Rev Nwakego Uhegwu, adding that some women had died on their way to hospital for delivery due to the bad roads and the gridlock that occur most of the times.
President to Satellite Forum, Mr Governor Initimi, under whose auspices, the protest was carried out, told eWorldnews that all efforts by residents to make the tank farm owners to see reason has been unheeded. The Forum, he said has had several meetings with the owners but the meetings have not borne any fruit.
The Satellite Town Forum, which organized today’s protest joined the Satellite Town Central Resident’s Association (STCRA), which had, since 2013, been in the forefront of the struggle to save Satellite Town from the tankers.
STCRA had had several meetings with officials of federal government, the Lagos State government and representatives of the tank farm owners in a bid to stop the location of the tank farms in their community.
The STCRA opposition was ignored by the parties involved in the approval and allocation of the tank farms. A compromised solution which involved the establishment of a fire fighting station to quench any incident of tanker explosion and the expansion of the roads the tankers would pass through had not been carried out.
Promises by the tank farmers that they would construct drainages to ease flooding of the area had also not been carried out.
Satellite roads are in very bad shape, with several water-logged pot holes on virtually every road in the community. To worsen matter the Lagos state government continues to contribute to the bad situation by failing, for the past years, to carry out road construction on the various paths that lead to the homes of the residents.
The STRCA had in the past 10 years taken pictures and recordings of Satellite Town bad roads and had forwarded them to Alausa, Lagos State seat of government, and had also invited engineers of the Lagos State government at various occasions to carry out need assessment of the community.
Unfortunately those efforts of the STCRA had been ignored by Alausa politicians, whom sources claim are not happy that Satellite Town residents, populated by those not from the South-west, do not vote for them during elections, though they have never failed to harass them to pay their taxes.
