Lagos State Governor Babatunde Fashola has said the Federal Government is responsible for the explosion of a petroleum tanker earlier this week that killed 15 people and destroyed properties valued at tens of millions of Naira.
Speaking to newsmen in the State, the governor said, “Everyone must take his own share of the responsibility on this issue. First, the federal government. There isn’t a rocket science about restoring the old rail tracks. If the rail is working as they say, then we should begin to use it to transport our petroleum products rather than use the road. It will save the roads and fuel.”
He attributed the corruption and mismanagement of resources in the oil and gas sector as being partly to blame for the problems the country was facing.
“When one looks at the waste in NNPC. Now we were talking about $45billion that was missing. They seem to be quite satisfied to tell us that it was only $10 billion that was missing. This is a lot of money. One dollar of public money is a lot of money. But later they told us that they spent the money actually.
“Now serious questions must be asked by the National Assembly, chartered accountants and Nigerians about who appropriated the money. Was it spent during the period that the CBN governor said that they didn’t account for the money or was it before? And if there was appropriation for it, then we can now begin to seriously talk that were they the right places to spend the money? Given that if we had spent $10 billion to try and use it to build rails for evacuation of fuel from Apapa and Tin Can Island, maybe those people wouldn’t have died. They are serious questions. First was that the priority? Were those the things to spend them on assuming there was appropriation? They are serious questions that we all must ask at this moment.”