The Pan Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF) has warned Northern youths not to provoke a crisis in the Niger Delta region, with what it described as unnecessary and misguided expressions and actions.
In a statement signed by its National Publicity Secretary, Ken Robinson, PANDEF said its reaction was necessitated by reports that Northern youths, under the 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 cautioned that the reported threat by the so-called Amalgamated Arewa Youth Groups to paralyse activities at NNPC headquarters, if the said contract awarded to Ekpemupolo is not revoked is not only absurd and delusional but capable of sparking severe consequences in the Niger Delta region.
“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”.
PANDEF in the statement insists 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.
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“While our 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.”
The group expressed concern that where the Petroleum Industry Act provided a paltry 3% of the settlor’s operational cost for the Host Communities Development Trust Fund, it appropriated a 30% of NNPC’s oil and gas profit for the Frontier Oil Exploration Fund.
PANDEF said on the heels of this and other developments, the reported protest by the said Arewa Youths over the surveillance contract awarded to High Chief Government Ekpemupolo is most insolent and annoying.
PANDEF advised the Federal Government, and the management of the titular NNPC limited, to ignore the shenanigans of the purported Arewa youth groups, warning that the Niger-Delta should not be provoked any further.
Editor Oloyede Oworu
