80% of petrol tankers lack safety features – MOMAN

The Major Oil Marketers Association of Nigeria said on Thursday that about 80 per cent of the 10,000 petroleum tankers used for transporting products nationwide lacked critical safety features needed for the safe transportation of such commodities by road.

MOMAN’s Chairman, Mr Adetunji Oyebanji, said this in Abuja at the ‘Truck Renewal Workshop’ organised by MOMAN and the Nigerian Association of Road Transport Owners.

He said MOMAN was in talks with NARTO on the need for fleet renewal, adding this would lead to the replacement of unsafe trucks in the fleet of transporters.

In a related development, the House of Representatives Committee on Tank Farms has frowned on obsolete facilities at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation depot in Calabar, saying some of the facilities now posed a danger to people.

The committee Chairman, Mr Sergius Ogun, said this on Thursday in Calabar during a stakeholders’ meeting with tank farm operators

He said the facilities were no longer fit for an operational environment of a tank farm as they posed a serious danger to the lives of the host communities and workers in the depot.

The committee had, along with the Department of Petroleum Resources, visited some of the tank farms to check their status and proximity to residential areas.

Ogun said, “If every operator behaves like NNPC, they will set the country ablaze because there are basic things that are no longer in place in the NNPC depot.