The House of Representatives has urged Nigerians to procure and install fire extinguishers and gas leakage detectors in their homes.

The green chamber also mandated its committees Petroleum Resources (Downstream), Commerce and Gas Resources to investigate causes of gas explosions in the country.

The resolutions followed a motion moved by Ben Kalu on Thursday during plenary.

Moving the motion, Kalu listed some of the major gas explosions in Nigeria over the past few years.

Kalu, in his motion blamed the explosions on “failure to enforce standards, failure to clamp down on violators and failure to prevent citing of gas stations and refill outlets in residential areas by regulatory bodies, including the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) and the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON).”

He explained that there are no facilities for “for requalification, certification and re-certification of gas cylinders in Nigeria.”

Kalu also informed the House that SON announced a new policy on gas cylinder ownership in 2014, he however, expressed regret that the agency is yet to roll out the policy.

“In order to curb the domestic production and importation of substandard and fake gas cylinders, the then Director-General of Standards Organisation of Nigeria, Dr. Joseph Odumodu, in 2014, assured Nigerians of the implementation of a new policy on the ownership of gas cylinders;

“Six years after the conception of the policy, the Federal Government is yet to commence the implementation of the new policy on ownership of cylinders in Nigeria while the production and importation of fake and substandard cylinders continue unabated while lives have been lost to the same problem which the proposed policy would have solved,” he said.

The motion was taken when it was put to question by the Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila

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