When will pipeline disasters end in Nigeria?

Nigeria is one of the world's major oil producers, contributing about 1,800,000 barrels of crude oil to OPEC. However, its pipelines cut through many residential areas, both in cities such as Lagos and other oil-producing areas. Several of these have exploded, often when local people drill holes through them to steal oil.
Pipeline vandalisation can be traced to several factors, one of which is poverty. The vast majority of citizens live below poverty line, surviving on one dollar per day.
Another factor is high cost of petroleum products like fuel for motorists and gasoline for manufacturing companies. These bring about pipeline vandalisation which results in fire disasters that claim lots of lives.
The country witnessed her first pipeline fire disaster at Jesse in October 1998 which claimed about 1,000 lives. Another followed March 2000 in Abia state: 50 people died. In July of the same year, a similar event occurred in Warri which killed 300 people. Again, on November 30, a leaking oil pipeline caught fire at a beachhead near the fishing village of Ebute near Lagos, killing at least 60 people.
In June 2003, there was a pipeline disaster in Abia which killed about 105 people. This was replicated in Lagos when 60 people were burnt to death on September 17, 2004. Still in Lagos, a similar disaster occurred in December 2004, leading to the death of 20 people.
On May 12, 2006, when the whole country was struggling to prevent the third-term agenda of Obasanjo, some impoverished Nigerians were busy scooping fuel illegally from a busted pipeline on Atlas Creek Island, which exploded and killed 150 on the spot.
Again in December 2006, thieves vandalized a pipeline passing through the Abule Egba area of Lagos to siphon off large amounts of fuel. Some time later, hundreds of local people had arrived on the scene, carrying jerry cans and plastic buckets, when a vast explosion shook the neighborhood. About 260 people died on the spot.
There was a similar disaster in December 2007, which burnt between 45 and 50 people to death.
And now, on May 15, another pipeline disaster took Ijegun suburb, Lagos by surprise. About 14 people were feared dead and many more injured people rushed to nearby hospitals.
Reports from The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) reveal that at least 400 acts of vandalism are perpetrated on its pipelines each year.
Can we now refer to the re-occurring pipeline explosion as a man-made earthquake that claims lots of lives every year?
The Federal Government and its parastatals should create a task force that will be deployed to areas where pipelines are located in Lagos and other parts of the country. This is to prevent a re-occurrence of this disaster.
If pipelines are properly protected, the flow of the nation’s crude oil to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting countries (OPEC) will be high and the scarcity of petroleum products in the country will be curbed, leading to low cost of petroleum products.