By Paul Williams
Youth leaders from the ethnic groups in the Niger Delta have asked the Federal Government and the Ogoni Dialogue Committee to adopt the community engagement model used along the Eastern corridor of the Trans Niger Pipeline as the basis for resuming oil production in Ogoni area.
The leaders, coming under the banner of the Niger Delta Ethnic Youth Leaders Forum, said the model, developed by Pipeline Infrastructure Nigeria Limited (PINL), the integrated pipeline infrastructure company responsible for the Eastern corridor of the Trans Niger Pipeline (TNP) and the Eastern Gas Network, offers a working template for the dialogue process now under way.
Spokesman of the group, Engr. Legborsi Yamaabana, at the stakeholders’ meeting for host communities along the Eastern corridor convened by PINL in Port Harcourt on Thursday, said the youths are not opposed to the resumption of production, but want to be brought fully into the process. The Ogoni oil fields have been shut in for 33 years.
Yamaabana, who is also the President-General of the Ogoni Youths Federation, said: “There is a model that PINL has adopted and implemented in the Niger Delta, and that model is working. It is a model of constructive engagement, of inclusion, of carrying the host community along. In all of this dialogue, the youths of Ogoniland have been excluded. If those driving the Ogoni re-entry lack ideas, they should go and meet PINL for the model they are using to succeed.”
PINL’s General Manager, Community and Stakeholder Relations, Dr. Akpos Mezeh, told the meeting that operations across the TNP and the Eastern Gas Network were largely uninterrupted through the past month, sustained by collaboration with security agencies, contractors and host communities.
He said the African Atlantic Gas Pipeline, designed to move 30 billion cubic metres of gas a year from Nigeria to Morocco and now covered by a sovereign framework agreed by ECOWAS Heads of State, depends on the same conditions. “World-class energy infrastructure can only thrive where pipelines are secure, communities are peaceful, and stakeholders work together,” Mezeh said.
Engr. Akponime Omojevwhe of the NNPC Limited Project Monitoring Office commended the Emohua zone for recording no case of infraction or vandalism during the period under review.
Traditional rulers at the meeting, including the paramount rulers of Emohua and Eleme kingdoms, said the engagement model had changed the terms of oil and gas operation in the region, and urged the company to sustain it.
