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By Young Erhiurhoro
More oil bearing communities in OML 30 in Delta State are agitating for more job slots, as well as to be fully involved in the on-going pipeline surveillance contract recently awarded to former militant leader, High Chief Government Ekpemupolo, also known as Tompolo, by the Federal Government.
The agitations came from different communities in OML 30, reportedly caused by “the kind of politics and power play involved in the contract.”
Youth leaders in Uwheru and Unenurhie communities called on the contractor and the Federal Government to remove politics from the contract as the job was meant to protect and secure oil facilities and also completely stop the criminal acts of oil theft, pipeline vandalism and illegal oil bunkering.
Addressing the issue in the two communities, the youth leaders who did not want their names in print said, “We want to appreciate the Federal Government for designing this job to involve the youths of oil bearing communities. It’s really true that when you give fish to a cat to keep, it will be difficult for such a fish to easily get lost. This is the mindset of the Federal Government for bringing this programme. It’s a big time contract.
“But what we are agitating for now is that, we need more of the job opportunities. We have a lot of youths in our various communities that are jobless and have no means of livelihood. Such jobless youths should be employed with this contract to remove their thoughts and attention from engaging in criminal acts or activities. In fact, this is the only way to stop oil bunkering in these our communities. Don’t forget, an adage says that, an idle mind is the devil’s workshop. The contract is basically meant for youths in order to remove them from this oil bunkering. Therefore, the contractor should try to achieve the objective of awarding the contract to him by carrying all parties and partners along.”
The youth leaders said, “The job slots they gave to us are too small and this can cause problem for us again in our various communities. For instance, twenty job slots were given to Unenurhie community. The community as we speak, has over two thousand youths. In this case, how do you expect to share the twenty job slots to create fairness and equity amongst the youths? When we attempted to share them just few days ago, it cost a big fight here amongst the youths. We couldn’t share them as arranged. We therefore want to plead with the contractor and those involved to give us more job slots.
“Without giving us more job slots, it will be very difficult for them to achieve the best of this contract. Some politicians are already coming in to hijack the job slots for their fans and followers. They are doing this now at the detriment of those who do not have Abuja connection or are not directly connected to Tompolo himself. Like in our community now, we have nobody to fight for us. But we always bear the brunt whenever there are problems of oil spillage and pipeline vandalism from oil wells and pipelines.
“We can’t continue to suffer this, then at the end we would be denied the benefits just because we have no big politician or top government official from our community. We need more job slots to carry all the youths along if the Federal Government wants this contract to be successful and to also achieve its set objectives.”
The youth leaders in OML 30 communities that spoke to our correspondent during the media chat however called on Tompolo to shun nepotism, favouritism, tribalism and political affiliations in allocating or distributing the different job slots to the different oil bearing communities across the Niger Delta region. They sued for fairness, justice and equity in sharing the job slots amongst the various communities in the region in order to create sense of belonging to every oil bearing community in the contract.
