What Osinbajo didn’t see in his N’Delta tour

A first-class traditional ruler, the Ibenanaowei of Ekpetiama Kingdom, Bayelsa State, His Royal Majesty, King Dakolo Bubraye, Agada IV, has said that besides the despoliation of oil-bearing communities by oil companies, oil workers were arbitrarily impregnating Niger Delta women and abandoning them, warning that if unrestrained, the next chapter of violence in the region, masterminded by products of the unbridled sexual unions, will be unspeakable. The monarch, who called for rehabilitation of the teeming youths in a chat with the Niger Delta Voice, NDV, said: “There is an aspect which the acting President did not discuss during his recent tour of Niger Delta and people hardly discuss it. I call it the social impact of oil exploration and exploitation. The social impact is huge and we are suffering a huge negative effect out of it, our children are dropping or have dropped out of school. The National Agency against the Trafficking in Persons, NAPTIP, should come and arrest some of these oil workers and jail them because pedophilia is a common place.” The royal father asserted: “The social impact is so huge that we are on the verge of extinction, it is the real extermination of the people. If young girls of 10 to 13 years will be initiated into prostitution as a result of proximity to an oil facility, is that community still alive? That is what we are suffering and that is what the oil companies do not have the barometer to measure, but that is our fate. Oil workers, who came here 30 years ago indiscriminately, put some of our women in the family way and were not honourable enough to own up, they abandoned them and ran away,  adding to the social mix.” HRM Bubraye added, “As a monarch, I have seen it in its raw form. The oil companies should be held responsible and accountable for this menace and they should correct it because without correcting it, we will have a natural succession of violence from one group to another group. They must find a way to rehabilitate these teeming children. Everything should start now; they must show utmost good faith and demonstrate it with action.” Call security agencies to order Applauding Osinbajo for recognizing the way forward, especially the decision to integrate illegal oil refiners into the oil industry with the establishment of modular refineries, he said: “He has to call the security agencies to order, they should stop burning and polluting the creeks, they are not helping us. “The move to integrate them (illegal crude oil refiners) is very welcome and will solve most of the problem if the federal government can keep to its words. There are countries that I know that their refineries are about the size of a four to five -bedroom flats and they take care of their needs. Something you consider very bad today may be an excellent thing tomorrow and you will regret why you did not legalize the local refineries idea 40 years ago.” Regulation will streamline industry: His words: “Every utility should have a regulator; utilities are bodies that provide the services the people need. The petroleum sector has its own regulator which is the NNPC. The regulator should go about taking numbers of all those who are engaged in the local refineries business and those intending to join and then aggregate them. “You can then group them and give them licenses to operate. By so doing, they will no longer be afraid of the security operatives, and note that they have been able to survive the law enforcement operatives for so long because they have a way of settling them. But once you regulate them, they will stop bribing the security operatives and that harassment stops. He added: “So they have the air of businessmen and entrepreneurs capable of employing people, from that moment, they will work normally. From here you can now support and give them best practices and also standardize them, you can say you must have this or that before you will be allowed to operate. Once you do that, they will begin to earn more and produce petroleum product that is required around their vicinity.” Tax, more employment: The monarch asserted: “At that moment, you have brought peace to the area, and then you can also derive revenue because you now know them, you can tax them of which they will pay because they are now legitimate. They will pay tax to the federal or state and local government or whichever government. This will not only impact the Niger Delta alone,  it will bring much more employment in the sense that people from other parts of the country,  who have some expertise will come and collaborate with the youths of the Niger Delta and  I think that is the way to go.” No cosmetic relocation: On the relocation of the headquarters of the oil multinationals to their areas of operation, he said: “It is long overdue, this is the only country in whole world where you operate somewhere and you locate a small office somewhere else and you do all your employment from there, pay your taxes there and you come here and pollute this side and give us nothing. “It is double standard and criminal. If this country is honest, some of these companies and their collaborators should be facing criminal charges in the true sense. Everywhere else, it is the opposite that is done. They should relocate and not just bringing one small office and call it headquarters, but they must relocate their activities down here and let us see them, get employed and that is what we are looking at. “There should be no cosmetic relocation whereby you keep all your activities in Lagos or Abuja and bring a few caravans and pretend to say that you have brought the headquarters, we must be sincere to ourselves, and government should act on what it has said,” he told NDV.