Lagos — Nigeria lost N165 billion to oil theft and vandalism between 2009 and December 2010, official of the Pipelines Products and Marketing Company (PPMC) has said.

Managing Director of the company, Prince Haruna Momoh disclosed this yesterday while addressing journalists in Ogun state shortly after the commissioning of four triple agent fire fighter trucks at Mosinmi Training Centre.

He said "We had also lost life in the cost of repairing the vandalized pipelines in Arepo. We have lost about five staffs that were killed while on duty to repair the vandalised lines.

"We however called on Nigerians and stakeholders to come together to fight on this menace."

Momoh said that "we always have challenges because of the rate at which pipelines haves been vandalised, practically on daily basis.

"So we have challenges in terms of distributions, which we have always said that if and only the vandals would allow, PPMC to position effective and efficiently distribute product across the states.

He said the safest and quickest means of distributing petroleum product remain the pipeline network.

He said it is through the pipelines that government can effectively push product rather than engaging trucks as a method of distribution.

He said that trucks methodology of product distribution has contributed immensely to the challenges confronting effective products distribution across the country.