No wonder Garri sometimes smells like petrol !
The police in Lagos State have arrested a middle aged woman, Mrs. Kemi Omoye, with 25 big kegs of substance suspected to be petrol.
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Omoye, who sells garri, a Yoruba staple food, at Ikorodu area of the state, was accosted on Friday by policemen attached to PSS 065 unit on her way from Igbogbo, a suburb of Ikorodu.
Our correspondent gathered that the garri seller attracted the interest of the police because of the fact that the kegs filled the car she chartered to the extent that it was difficult for the driver to see his back from the driving mirror.
The car marked AG 542 DDA belonged to Olawale Abdul who was also the one driving it at the time the police stopped the car. He is also being held for interrogation.
Lagos State police spokesman, Mr. Frank Mba, said the point at which the suspects were stopped at Igbogbo was not from an NNPC pipeline.
He said, "We discovered that the pipeline was broken and people had been siphoning oil from it."
But Omoye told our correspondent that the substance in the kegs was payment for some bags of garri he sold to an unnamed man.
"He gave them to me because he did not have money to pay. He said I should sell them and used the money as my payment," she said, adding that each keg was supposed to be sold at the rate of N1,500.
Also, the driver said he did not know that the substance was petrol.
He said, "I was merely doing my job. She called me and told her my price and she agreed. The thing smelt like Ogogoro, i did not know it was petrol."
However Mba said the police was accusing the two persons of being oil bunkerers, "And the police in Lagos state are determine to stop their activities and the activities of people who vandalise pipelines and other government properties," he said.
