…As ex-militant donates to flood victims in N’Delta
The Senate has endorsed the award of N48 billion oil pipeline surveillance contract to a former militant leader in the Niger Delta region, Government Ekpemupolo aka Tompolo.
Chairman of the Senate Committee on Petroleum (Upstream), Bassey Akpan, spoke to journalists after presenting the committee’s report on “oil lifting, theft and the impact on petroleum production and oil revenues” at plenary in Abuja.
He stressed that there is nothing wrong in the engagement of non-state actors to protect pipelines in the country if such decision would achieve the desired results.
Akpan noted that since the engagement of Tompolo’s company to protect oil pipelines earlier this year, oil theft, which had caused the decline in the country’s production capacity and loss of over $2 billion dollars, has reduced.
The lawmaker said: “The recent pipeline surveillance contract given to a private security company is yielding positive results as the country’s oil production capacity has increased.
“There are both formal and informal approaches to solving the issue of oil theft. If that contract was contracted duly and processed, we don’t have any issue with it and if it yields desired outcomes, I don’t think there is anything wrong in it.
“We commend the NNPCL for the action. As we speak, the Forcado terminals have restored 500,000 barrels a day to our national production.”
Meanwhile, the Tompolo Foundation has donated various relief materials to augment assistance to Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) in impacted Niger Delta states.
Tompolo said the gesture is his contribution to support those impacted by the devastating flood.
“The Tompolo Foundation has been in the business of providing assistance to the less privilege since previous flood of 2012 and donated relief materials worth N150 million to flood-affected victims in Bayelsa, Delta and Rivers states,” he said.
Items donated include 600 bags of rice, 30 bags of beans, 60 kegs of palm oil, 200 kegs of groundnut oil, 500 packets of Indomie noddles, and 100 tubers of yam.
While delivering the relief items on Monday, the representative of the Tompolo Foundation, High Chief Macdonald Ebi Igbadiwei, who represents Southern Ijaw Constituency Four, in Bayelsa State House of Assembly, said High Chief Government Ekpemupolo’s deep sense of concern was torched by the devastating effect of the flood on both humans and infrastructure in Bayelsa State.
He said the foundation felt the need to empathise with them and give succour to those in trouble, as the flood in Bayelsa was akin to that of Pakistan.
“Bayelsa State is given the chunk of the relief materials because the devastation was unprecedented, and this, the Tompolo foundation put into consideration
“Personally as a person l provided relief materials to all the six wards in my Constituency”, he stated.
Receiving the items, the Chairman of Bayelsa State Committee on Flood Management and Mitigation, Mr. Iselema Gbaranbiri, along with other members of the committee, expressed gratitude to the gesture of High Chief Government Ekpemupolo for remembering his kinsmen, who were in dire need of assistance during the flood, and will continue to pray for God to protect him in all his future endeavours.