LAGOS – Pan Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF) has warned Northern youths not to provoke a crisis in the Niger Delta region, with unnecessary and misguided expressions and actions.
PANDEF’s statement is necessitated by reports that purported northern youths, under Amalgamated Arewa Youth Groups, demanded the termination of a reported pipeline surveillance contract awarded to a son of the Niger Delta region, High Chief Government Ekpemupolo (popularly known as Tompolo), during a protest at the headquarters of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited in Abuja.
PANDEF in a press statement on Wednesday signed by Hon. Ken Robinson its National Publicity Secretary, has cautioned that the reported threat by the Amalgamated Arewa Youth Groups to paralyse activities at NNPC headquarters, if the said contract awarded to Government Ekpemupolo was not revoked is not only absurd and delusional but capable of sparking severe consequences in the Niger Delta region.
The statement reads, “We are sending a serious warning to those misguided Arewa youths and their sponsors. Let it be known to them that the Niger Delta people will not tolerate such absurdity.
“Tompolo, and indeed any other capable son or daughter of the Niger Delta, for that matter, has the right to be awarded any contract by, any agency or company, of the Federal Government, more so the NNPC Limited, whose core operations are carried out mainly in the Niger Delta region.
“Nigeria is reportedly losing billions of naira daily through organised, outrageous crude theft by criminals and corrupt officials, it, thus, won’t be inapposite to infer that the so-called Amalgamated Arewa Youth Groups were mobilized by the “organized oil thieves” to impede the renewed efforts of NNPC limited, to mitigate the stealing of our crude oil, and also, safeguard the nation’s oil and gas assets.
PANDEF notes that the Niger Delta region has continued to suffer marginalisation and isolation in critical sectors of the country, especially in the oil and gas sector, stressing that while its people are denied adequate participation in, both the management and operations, of the oil and gas industry, including the Ownership of Oil Blocks and Marginal Fields, the sad reality is that people from other parts of the country, some of who do not even know what crude oil looks like but for what they see in pictures, own the bulk of oil marginal fields and blocks.
PANDEF notes that whereas the Petroleum Industry Act provided a paltry 3% of the settlor’s operational cost for the Host Communities Development Trust Fund, it brazenly appropriated a humongous 30% of NNPC’s oil and gas profit for a nebulous Frontier Oil Exploration Fund.
