How To Really Stop Oil Theft In Niger Delta – CDC

The Community Development Committees of Niger Delta Oil and Gas Producing Areas (CDC) has expressed strong condemnation of the recent resolve to increase military pressure to curb oil theft in the Niger Delta region saying that the use of brawn has overtime proved to be unhelpful.

The CDC in a statement issued by the chairman of its BoT, Comrade Joseph Ambakederimo observed that the directive will not be a panacea to the country’s inability to up crude oil production in the region which it blamed on the failure of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, NNPCL to up its game.

In a statement made available to GWG.ng the group said:

“The truth is that there are no new investments in the Oil sector for over two decades, it is not the unlicensed refineries operators that are responsible for the dearth in the oil industry, it is not the unlicensed refineries operations that is the reason Nigeria cannot meet its OPEC quota, it is not the unlicensed refinery operators that the petro-dollar is not flowing as it used to.

“The truth is that the Oil industry has been grossly been mismanaged by the present leadership of the NNPCL and all of its subsidiaries. So this fire brigade approach of deploying heavy  security forces to the region won’t solve anything, it is a face saving measure put up to be seen as though some persons are working, it’s all a fluke.

While not absolving the host communities, the CDC said:

“we believe the Community conspiracy of silence is due to long abandonment and failure of all of the agencies of government that are saddled with the responsibility of bringing infrastructural and human capital development to the Oil producing communities in spite of very huge monthly allocations to states.

“There has been, over time, mismanagement of resources that hitherto would have been deployed to the development of these communities without consequence. The people have become disenchanted, hopelessness is rife as many years of neglect have taken a toll on the people, therefore they have ceased to care about the destruction of Oil infrastructure around them.

“While we apportion blames to the communities, we cannot take our eyes off activities in the high seas and also in the Crude oil terminals.”

Noting the efforts of the CDC in redressing the situation in the past, Ambakaderimo said:

“We as the Community Development Committees of Niger Delta Oil and Gas Producing Areas (CDC) have made concerted efforts to proffer a near-fool-proof strategy to reducing to the barest minimum the incidents of oil theft, to the extent that some government agencies have bought into our strategies, but so far the real critical stakeholders are pushing back on the CDC for reasons best known to them, perhaps the CDC strategy is seen as a solution that will put them out of business.

“We have said many times that bombing is not the solution as there has been many more breaches and construction of many new refining outlets springing up every hour, therefore commonsense tells us that the bombing is not the solution.

“We must begin to talk with these unlicensed refinery operators and provide alternative incentives to make them look away.

“The CDC leadership has taken the responsibility to engage with many of the operators and we have made significant progress even when many of them were skeptical of government keeping to its side of bargains reached overtime. “So there is a trust issue but we keep assuring them that there will be treated fairly by the President Bola Tinubu’s government. Therefore the CDC leadership is appealing to the Federal Government to partner with the CDC to bring about successful cut down of Oil theft.”

Send Us A Press Statement Advertise With Us Contact

 And For More Nigerian News Visit GWG.NG