…demands publication of list of erring NDDC contractors
ODAHIEKWU OGUNDE, Yenagoa
The Ijaw National Congress (INC) has inaugurated a seven-man investigating team to probe the operations of the Atala Oil Field from inception to how the Bayelsa Oil Company Limited (BOCL) lost its right to manage the common asset for Bayelsa State.
At the inauguration that was held at Ijaw House, Yenagoa, Bayelsa State capital, National President, INC, Prof. Benjamin Okaba, appointed Prof. Ambily Etekpe as the Chairman of the investigating team.
Other members are Chief Ayakeme Whisky (Vice Chairman), Bomo-Toms Fetepigi-Obhe (Secretary), Igbamukumo Jephthan (Asst. Secretary), environmentalist and human rights activist, Alagoa Morris, Alfred Doibo and Pereowei Subai, both lawyers.
In April 2020, the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), by a Notice, relocated the Bayelsa Oil Field referred to Atala Oil Field with Mining Lease (OML 46) and returned the same to the Marginal field basket.
The DPR indicated that the relocation was necessitated by the failure of the BOCL to develop the field and bring it to its full production.
Okaba said that on February 28, 2021, the DPR purportedly assigned the Atala Oil field to a new company and thereafter the Ijaw people had series of tales bordering on privatisation, ownership by trick to open illegal bunkering activities ongoing at the site.
Okaba, a Professor of Sociology at the Federal University, Otuoke, Bayelsa State, said the Ijaw nation could not continue to clamour for resource ownership, resource control and management, without demonstrating concern over “our commonwealth — the Atala Oil Field” allocated to the Ijaw people in Bayelsa and other resources/interventions are managed and mismanaged.
He said keeping quiet in the midst of the internal self-inflicted misery occasioned by their supposed leaders who had become the greatest obstacles to their development and emancipation, would remain a huge moral burden that they didn’t intend to bear, especially at this crucial stage of their struggle.
According to Okaba, the committee’s specific terms of reference are to carry out a full scale probe into the management of the Atala Oil Field since inception, investigate the circumstances and factors that led to the relocation of the licence of the oil field and to identify persons or group of persons responsible for the current despicable state of the oil field.
He also said the committee were to recommend ways of reversing the relocation and or restoration of the Atala Oil Field to the Bayelsa State Government and deal with any other matter related to the subject matter.
He said by the intervention, the INC was telling Ijaw leaders, who by election or appointment, in or out of government, mismanaging the common wealth of the people that the time of reckoning is fast approaching.
Okaba also used the opportunity to call on the Federal Government of Nigeria to summon the necessary courage to publish the list of persons alleged to have abandoned the over 13,000 NDDC projects meant for the advancement of the people and the environment.
Speaking on behalf of other committee members, Prof. Ambily Etekpe, accepted the responsibility to carry out the assignment, saying they were capable of handling the task.
He stated: “We will apply all methods to make sure that we produce the criminal documents. It is so sad that in all the nine oil producing states, only Bayelsa, which has been at the forefront of this struggle, has been disenfranchised.
“It is equally curious that nobody is talking about it and that is why for so long we have been crying for a credible INC. We will do the best we can in this matter.”