NIGERIA. SHELL AND PPMC WANT REMOVAL OF DEATH PENALTY FOR PIPELINE VANDALS

Pipelines and Products Marketing Company Limited (PPMC), a subsidiary of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and Shell Petroleum advocated that vandals of petroleum and gas pipelines should no longer be made to face the death penalty if caught. Both stakeholders in the petroleum sector made their position known while appearing before the House of Representatives Committee on Petroleum Refineries and Products Marketing. The committee was holding a public hearing on a bill for an act to ammend the Petroleum Production and Distribution (Anti-Sabotage) Act.
According to the PPMC managing director, Sulaimon Achimogun, the death penalty was no longer an issue because it had become obsolete. “The deletion of death sentence is a welcome one in view of the fact that in our case law, no death penalty had been imposed on any pipeline vandal,” he argued. “Death sentence has become controversial and is fast becoming obsolete apart from being ineffectual as a deterrent,” said Dr. George Ogunyomi, senior counsel to Shell. However, both the PPMC and Shell Petroleum Development Company supported the option of 21 yeas imprisonment for vandals as being proposed in Section 3 of the amended bill.