Agency averts community/SPDC crisis in Bayelsa

Determined to promote government’s peace building efforts, the Bayelsa State Partnership Agency (BSPA) has brokered a peace meeting to quell the tempers of the monarch and stakeholders of Kolokuma clan awakened by the uninformed gas flaring by Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC).

The situation, it was gathered would have snowballed into crisis, as the community youths mounted a blockade leading to SPDC’s facility in Kaiama and shut down their operations, but for the timely intervention of the agency.

Speaking with journalists in Yenagoa shortly after resolving the impasse, the Director-General of the BSPA, Honourable Braboke Stanley Enaigbaha said an impasse of such nature was responsible for full blown crisis that had engulfed communities in the past thereby stalling socio-economic growth and development of the affected community and the people.

According to him, the Dickson-led ‘restoration government’ was pre-occupied with building infrastructures in all sectors of the economy and focused on efforts to improve the well being of Bayelsans, therefore any impasse of such magnitude was capable of distracting the government and that spurred timely response from the agency.

Enaibagha explained that trouble started as a result of gas flared at the SPDC facility in the community without notification, a situation that heightened fear as the paramount ruler and the people witnessed various shades of lightening and darkness. Irked by the action of SPDC, the community youths were forced to block the route to their facility and demanded that they shut down operations.

Continuing, he noted that unknown to many, some members of the same community had signed a Freedom to Operate order (FTO) with the SPDC without informing the paramount ruler and stakeholders, even as he warned community representatives to desist from signing agreement deals with oil multinational oil companies without involving stakeholders and the paramount rulers of their communities.

The Director-General, however, enjoined host communities against all odds, to resist the temptation of resorting to block access or shut down the operation of oil facilities, stressing that should dialogue fail at the community level, then it behoves them to channel their grievances to the appropriate government organs saddled with the responsibility to look into their concerns.

Enaibagha reasoned that in as much as government would not fold its arms to allow communities be  engulfed in crisis, mutual respect of rights and limitation is expected for communal peace and also around the operation of oil prospectors, which would, invariably, attract investors to improve internally generated revenue to the state.

He, however, lauded the Special Adviser on Security, Bomo Spero-Jack and the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Mineral Resources for the collaboration towards peace building in communities and the state.