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The Managing Director of Peace GlobalSatellite Communications Limited, Barrister OreyeUdo Livingstone, has raised alarm over the involvement of the operatives of Operation MESSA in the vandalisation and outright stealing of his company’s underground cables at Omole, Lagos.
In a petition written to the Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Fatai Owoseni, titled, ‘Malicious Destruction of Telecommunication Cables, Forceful Stealing of The Cables Using Armed Soldiers of Operation MESSA With Registration Mark OP. MESSA Sector 3 005, Registration Number NA 0002 9 Brigade,’ a copy of which is made available that the MD of the wired telecommunication outfit said Peace Global got a loan of N178,000,000:00, to supplement the rolling out of wired telephone in Omole Phases I & II and its environs between 2004 and 2006.
According to him, thunderstorm damaged the telephone Switch in 2006. WEMA Insurance Brokers Limited failed to process the company’s our insurance claim leading prompting it to sue WEMA Bank PLC along with the insurance brokers and insurance companies through suit No.ID/199/2009 which is now on appeal at the Court of Appeal No. I406/2016.
Thereafter, the properties of the Managing Director, Barrister OreyeUdo Livingstone where he lives with his family, land and other properties of Peace Hotels Limited, Peace Global’s properties were all sold to Assets Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) by WEMA Bank because of the company’s to pay the loan used in buying the cables.
To rub mud into the already festered injury, the company’s overhead cables at Omole Phase II were vandalized by some cable/copper dealers who allegedly sponsored some officials of Omole Phase II CDA in respect of which one AbiodunAyanuga is on the run and the case is currently being investigated at the Lagos State Criminal Investigation Department (SCID), Panti.
Following that dastardly and illegal act, the perpetrators returned again on 2nd July, 2016 to cut down the underground cable bought by Peace Global from NexansKablemetal Nigeria PLC and installed by the company since 2004. “My workers explained to the copper/scrap dealers that the cables belong to Peace Global and not NITEL. The copper/scrap dealers forcefully broke into our underground joint box, cut our 1200 petrol jelly filled cables at several joints. The copper/scrap dealers instigated a soldier in the above-mentioned operation MESA team to slap one of my workers and my worker was beaten up by the soldier in the public.
“The copper/scrap dealers boasted that they were going to uproot the cables up to our telephone exchange at Plot 171 Obadina Street, Omole Phase I whereas the documents they were holding never sold Peace Global’s properties to them and NITEL has never had any telephone exchange in Omole Phase 1. The truth is that the copper/scrap dealers are thieves/robbers who try to give official colouration to what they are doing. We are saying this because if they were genuine buyers of NITEL cable, on being told that the cables that they were cutting were not NITEL cables, they should have stopped, to get clearance from whosoever sold to them. Instead of suspending action, the copper/scrap dealers moved from one joint box to the other vandalizing our cables and putting the cables in big trucks one of which has vehicle registration number FST-943XK,” Barrister Livingstone explained.
The already perplexed MD’s attempt to get the intervention of the police at Ojodu Police Station turned out to be an exercise in futility. According to him, “The copper/scrap dealers and their labourers along with trucks and army vehicle moved from one JB to the other pulling out our underground cables and carrying them away in the said truck, while one of them later known to be Mr. Jimoh Adebayo followed the policewoman sent from Ojodu Police Station just to engage the attention of Ojodu police while his cohorts continued cutting and carrying Peace Global’s underground cable under the escort of the said army vehicle.
“When I drew the attention of the crime officer at Ojodu Police Station to the report that the copper/scrap dealers were still cutting and removing our cables even as we were in the station, the crime officer asked the leader of the copper/scrap dealers to phone his men to stop cutting the cables and bring the already cut cables to Ojodu Police Station which was done. One of the copper/scrap dealers later known to be Mr. Judge called someone on the phone and gave the phone to the crime officer who thereupon told us that the matter was above her and she allowed the cables and the vehicles to be taken away by the copper/scrap dealers after she had written the names of about five of them, their phone numbers and addresses. It took spirited efforts on my part before the crime officer called three out of the copper/scrap dealers asking them to come on Monday by 3pm. She asked the copper/scrap dealers not to do anything to the cables yet but did not ask them to bring the cables back to the police station. The papers produced by the copper/scrap dealers should have been thoroughly investigated and their nexus or linkage to the present cables established before releasing the cables to the copper/scrap dealers,” he explained.
The MD, however, recalled that someone approached him not too long ago requesting to buy the company’s cable, a request which he polite turned down because the cables are not for sale. “It is possible that because I said no to the offer to buy, they went and organised the papers they are holding to rob us of the cables. The truth is that the damage the copper/scrap dealers deliberately and maliciously did to my cable network cannot be repaired because Kable Metal is no more producing petrol jelly-filled cables and no company is producing the cables in Nigeria presently. These are the people who have been sending thieves to vandalize our cables and bring to them to buy the stolen cables, burn the cables to extract the copper contents to use in the production of other things and not telecommunications. It is because the thieves sent by these people have finished stealing all our overhead cables that they now decided to steal the underground cables in the broad daylight using fictitious documents to deceive and hijacking apparatus of government officials to protect their diabolical design to rob,” he added.
Armed with all relevant document to justify his company’s ownership of the cables whose value at the time of purchase in 2004 is put at N63,836,757.31 (sixty-three million, eight hundred and thirty-six thousand, seven hundred and fifty-seven naira, thirty-one kobo) the embattled MD has therefore called on the commissioner of police to order investigation into the background of all the copper/scrap dealers who the crime officer at the Ojodu Police Station took down their details, to know who they intend supplying the cables to and where has been their source of supply.
He also requested the scrutiny of the authenticity of any document being paraded by the perpetrators because according to him, “NITEL knows and every telephone operator including NCC knows that Peace Global has underground cables. If NITEL never claimed that it is the only company which laid underground cable, any buyer of NITEL cannot sell what NITEL did not have,” he noted
