Lagos Satellite Town Residents Urge FG to Relocate Tank Farms

Satellite Town Forum has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to relocate the petroleum products tank farms and container terminals in the area in Lagos, stating that the deplorable condition of the road in Satellite town was due to the constant tear and wear caused by the trucks and tankers operating at the bonded warehouse in Alakija area of Lagos.

Disclosing this in Lagos on Sunday during a protest march, the Chairman of Satellite Town Forum, Governor Imitini, said the trucks and trailers (tankers) constitute hindrance in human activities as it subjects residents to a peculiar reprehensible squalour state.

He lamented that the cries of agony the people go through are yet to be comprehensibly acted upon by the authorities, adding that the private investors have placed the people under siege like a force of occupation.

The group leader maintained that the private investors business has exposed the people to daily danger of explosion and destruction as well as render their lives meaningless.

According to Imitini, “Since 2013, we have commenced a contrite struggle against the structures which were fewer then. Our whispers overtime have amassed to groans. In 2018, we sent an SOS to the president, governor of Lagos State and all the relevant institutions and agencies of the government. We summed it up with a press conference on December 4. We thought we had attracted a strategy that would douse all our sad past. But our conditions have worsened in the Satellite town situation.

“We therefore appeal to the federal and state government to save our lives by relocating the tank farms as well as revoking the licences of those that fraudulently procured them. None of them engaged the community in an EIA before their approvals. We ask that they leave the community. They should be relocated. Their licences should be audited and those who fraudulently got it should be sanctioned and their licences revoked. That corruption should be fought and won.”

He remarked further that despite several appeals made to the president and the Lagos State Government, the situations of the town has deteriorated, “we had in the said correspondence presented the squalour and distress we suffer in our community, owning to tank farms and container terminals.”

He also called on the federal government to construct large underground culverts across the depot road for onward routing to the sea, noting that there is need to remove tank farms facilities sited on direct flood channels.