From: Ben Dunno, Warri

An environment rights group in the Niger Delta, the Oil Spill Victims Vanguard (OSPIVV), has threatened court action against the Federal Government over the latter’s alleged reluctance to commence work at the site of the Ogidigben Gas Revolution Industrial Park (OGRIP) for which, the group claimed, over three million jobs would have been created for the teeming jobless able bodied youths in the country.

OSPIVV has, therefore, issued March 31, 2018 ultimatum to the Federal Government to conclude all necessary documentations with the appropriate agencies and contractors to mobilise to site to commence work on the project.

Giving the ultimatum at a press briefing in Warri, on Tuesday, OSPIVV, which is currently locked in a fierce legal battle with the international oil giant, Shell International Limited in London, over a $3.6 billion Bonga oil spill compensation disagreement, lamented the confused handling of the $20 billion OGRIP project by two federal agencies.

Speaking at the briefing, Executive Director of OSPIVV, Harrison Jalla, revealed that the project, which he said has the potential to provide gainful employments to more than 3 million youths of the oil-rich region had been abandoned for more than 3 years due to the failure of federal government agencies to agree on whose responsibility it should be to provide the enabling environment for investors.

According to him, “The host communities, which are equally stakeholders in the multi-billion dollar project, had been in touch with some of the foreign investors, who have continued to express their willingness to bring in their resources to make the project a reality, adding that the part to be played by the government agencies to provide the needed enabling environment would cost government nothing financially”.

“Mr. President, no cogent reason could be adduced for the unnecessary delay of this project other than gross ineptitude from the agencies of the federal government concerned with the provision of an enabling environment for foreign investors to take over the project. The NNPC do not need to invest one cent in the project, other than providing the enabling environment since it’s a purely private sector-driven project.

“Mr. President, as we speak two agencies of the federal government
the; Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and Nigerian
Export Processing Zone Authority (NEPZA), are fighting over who should provide the basic infrastructure for the project to take off. NNPC, having done the initial clearing of the site and constructed the helipad before NEPZA came in to interfere with the progress the NNPC had made”.

“As we speak, the cleared site has been overgrown with weeds and
trees, enveloping the helipad that was constructed by the NNPC. NEPZA was alleged to have contracted the handling of the site to a certain company called ALPHA Group, which has done nothing so far to prepare the site for investors to move in.

“It is a project that has the potential to create close to 3 million
jobs for youths in the Niger Delta who are daily turning to criminality. It is unacceptable, Mr. President, for this project to be further delayed. The federal government has the constitutional
responsibility to ensure gainful employments to all Nigerians. The
economic potential of the project is too huge to be toyed with”.

“If by the end of the month of March 2018 the project is not kick-started, we shall invoke our constitutional right to peaceful protest, within the ambit of the law to draw the federal government’s attention to the gross negligence of the Niger Delta, in a bid to bring the issue of the Gas Revolution Industrial Park to the front burner”, he warned.

-Sun