RESIDENTS SCOOP REFINED PETROL FROM THEIR WATER WELLS IN EJIGBO LAGOS STATE.

LONG before last week, residents of Tunde Alabi Street and its adjoining areas in Ejigbo, a suburb of Lagos in the Ejigbo Local Council Development Area (LCDA), had lived in peace, unaware of the danger waiting to explode around their homes.

But the peace in the neighbourhood was shattered after the discovery of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), popularly known as petrol, in some wells in the area. Even before the dust generated by the discovery could settle down, another hail of fresh dust was raised on Tuesday, August 27, 2013, when a troop of armed and stern looking security men, comprising soldiers and men of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), stormed the area in search of homes with large deposits of petroleum in their wells in the sleepy community.

Some of the bewildered residents stood in groups, discussing the strange find, while some others peeped from their windows as they watched in amazement as the security men combed suspected buildings in the area. Their countenance showed that they had never seen such a large number of armed security men in the community.

From the entrance of one of the streets, Animatu Ilo, to every nook and cranny of the community, the security men stood combat-ready at strategic positions in their numbers, as if on a mission to quell a boisterous ethnic clash.

Virtually all the raided houses were said to have large deposits of refined petroleum not mixed with water in their wells.

However, the house owners claimed ignorance of the development. Most them claimed that they had locked up the wells for periods ranging between six and seven years, and switched to boreholes after discovering that water from the wells were not good enough for human consumption. They said they were not aware that the wells had turned to large deposits of petroleum product after they locked and stopped using them about six year ago.

One of the house owners, Mrs. Perpetua Nwosu, expressed surprise that such quantity of petrol was in her well inside the building, located at 8, Tunde Alabi Street. She said: “I don’t even know what to say. I don’t know what to say. I never knew I had been living with fuel. If I knew that there was fuel in this compound, my dear, I would have left the house. When I came in here about six to seven years ago, the first thing we feared was fuel. They dug fuel at this junction here. I never knew they were doing it until I came out around 6am and found that the smell of fuel was all over the place and there was smoke everywhere.

“My grandmother was with me then, so I had to pack out for one week. Throughout that period, I didn't come close to this area. I have closed the well for the past six years. Today is my first day that I would open that well since I dug it six years ago. When I opened it, the security agents said they wanted to fetch the water and I gave them a fetching pail to do so. What they brought out was pure fuel. It is my compound. They did not bring out any water. It was pure fuel. I never knew.

“I dug the well before I moved in here because it was the water that we used for building the house. But there was no fuel in it then. It was purely water. Why I dug this borehole was because I discovered that the well was smelling, as if contaminated by fuel. When I observed that, I locked it up and dug this borehole. I have not been using it for the past six years.”

Asked if she reported to anybody that the smell of fuel was coming from the well, she replied: “What I am telling you is that the moment I knew that it was smelling, I locked it up. But I didn’t know that the fuel was in large quantity. I am not the only one; the whole of this area’s wells are smelling. Nobody knew how the fuel went in and how to go about it. Then the next thing we did was to condemn this well. I thought that was the only way I could take care of the problem.

“Thereafter, I dug this borehole. I dug the borehole with the hope that if it was deeper, it would not smell, but after constructing the borehole, we still discovered that it was still smelling. I am not using it for cooking. I go out to get water that I use. If I knew that the fuel in the well was as much as the quantity they scooped out today, I would not have even been using it for bathing.” One of the resident told the police.