Exactly a month after three employees of
the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation were allegedly killed by
suspected pipeline vandals in Arepo, Ogun State, the police have found
their corpses.
The Police Special Task Force on
Anti-Pipeline Vandalism on Saturday recovered bullet-ridden bodies of
the workers, identified as a Deputy Manager in charge of Pipelines Right
of Way and two other engineers deployed in the area to repair a
vandalised pipeline on September 5, 2012.
“We found, in a decomposing state,
bullet-ridden bodies of the three victims. We learnt that the body of
the local security guard employed by the NNPC, Taye, was cut into pieces
and thrown into a swamp,” the head of the task force, Friday Ibadin,
said.
NNPC authorities had said a team of
engineers and technicians of the Pipelines and Product
Marketing
Company, a subsidiary of the NNPC that was dispatched to carry out the
repair had successfully put out the fire by ensuring a complete cut-off
of product supply to the pipeline from the Atlas Cove depot.
It was learnt that the team was about to
access the damaged point to commence proper assessment of the scope of
work when the vandals opened fire, killing the officials and injuring
several others.
Ibadin had said two weeks ago that six
suspects – Posibi Ruben, Imerepmamu Joel, John Isaiah, Saheed Mudashiru,
Ineye Okpose and Timi Gnungunu – had been arrested in connection with
the murder.
He said Joel led the police to where the corpses were found.
According to him, officers who were
using speedboats and helicopters to comb the creeks near Arepo dug up
the bodies in two shallow graves.
He said, “Shortly after the incident,
the Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed Abubakar, reconstituted the
dissolved Anti-vandal team. It became important to get to the root of
the incident that led to the death of the NNPC officials. And in the
cause of investigation, about six suspects were arrested. We gathered
from the confession of Joel that he knew where the NNPC workers were
buried.
“Initially, he took our team to a spot
and after several hours, the bodies were not found. Two days later, he
opened up and agreed to take us to the real spot.
“It took six hours of sailing to get to
the spot. We had 40 heavily armed men, and we took along a pathologist, a
coroner, and the medical team from the NNPC that eventually identified
the bodies.
They took us to a place where they claimed they bury
non-natives. With the assistance of one Bosco, Opidi and Joel, we were
shown two shallow graves. It was there that we discovered the bodies and
they have been deposited in a mortuary.”
Ibadin commended the gallantry of the
sector commander, Onaghise Osayande, and his team who recovered the
bodies, adding that further investigations would be carried out.
Meanwhile, the acting Group General
Manager, Public Affairs Division of NNPC, Mr. Fidel Pepple, has blamed
the ongoing fuel shortage in some parts of the country on the shutdown
of the damaged System 2B pipeline which carries one-third of the
nation’s daily fuel needs.
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