Chairman of Warri South Local Government Area, Michael Tidi, has urged the Movement for the Development of Itsekiri Oil/Gas Producing Communities (MDIOGPC) to embrace dialogue and jettison their threats to ground the oil and gas industry in the country over perceived marginalisation.
Tidi explained in a statement made available to BusinessDay in Warri that executing the threat in the face of the global economic downturn occasioned by the coronavirus pandemic would further deplete the revenue profile of the federal and state governments and subsequently reduce government’s financial muscle to address the genuine agitation.
The Warri South LGA chairman alluded to the Delta State government’s position that the world has been watching the commendably peaceful protests by the Itsekiri group over the unfair deprivation of the Modular Floating Dockyard (MFD) for training of students of the Nigerian Maritime University and the legitimate demand for resumption of construction work at the Gas Revolution Industrial Park Project (GRIP) in Warri South-West Local Government Area.
“The world knows it is unconscionable to deny the oil-producing people Oil Mining Licences, OML and Marginal Fields generously given to others to their exclusion,” Tidi said.
While noting that the Federal Government has awarded the electrification project that will benefit about 50 communities in the Escravos area and work is ongoing but needs be expedited, Tidi stressed the need for sustained dialogue by members of the Movement for the Development of Itsekiri Oil/Gas Producing Communities (MDIOGPC) as well as other critical stakeholders from Warri South, Warri South-West and Warri North Local Government Areas with the Federal Government so as to urgently fix issues of ocean surge, environmental degradation, land reclamation and lack of other basic infrastructures plaguing the oil and gas producing/riverine communities of the three Warri LGAs.
Recall that Gbaramatu Ijaw and the Itsekiri groups had reiterated their threat to ground Nigeria’s oil and gas industry over lack of assurance by the Federal Government to address demands such as facilitation of the abandoned age-long Omadino-Escravos Road and the Koko/Ogheye Road Projects as well as the need for the Federal Government to immediately halt the current process of bids for the 57 marginal oil fields, wherein they called for the doctrine of necessity to be invoked and applied to incorporate the interest of competent companies owned by Gbaramatu indigenes as well as Itsekiri sons and daughters from oil and gas producing communities.
