Fighting criminality in Niger Delta without putting the necessary infrastructure in place won’t work – Emami

ABUJA –A Warri Chief and Chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Chief Ayiri Emami, on Monday told President Bola Tinubu that fighting criminality in the Niger Delta without putting in place infrastructure in the region will not achieve any results.

Chief Ayiri also lamented the poor state of infrastructure in Delta State, especially the road from Warri to Escravos and the need to dredge the Koko and Warri ports.

This is as the Itsekiri Chief has said that oil theft has drastically reduced to about 80 percent as a result of the efforts of the communities in the state.

Fielding questions on why he was at the State House, he said: “Sometime last year if you recall, in September, I was here (State House) to see Mr. President, there were some issues I brought before him and those issues were part of his promises during the campaign. So he said when he comes back from America, he will definitely call me to come back here. that’s why I’m here.

“One of those issues have to do with the road from Warri to Escravos, He made promises that once he is being elected, if we vote for him, he is going to ensure that that road is being constructed, so I came here with the Minister for Niger Delta so that they can put heads together on how that road can be constructed for us in which he gave a nod.

“He asked the Minister to go and put up his memo and come back on how they can go about it. This is one of the issues. The other issues have to do with politics, personal issues, it has to do with the immediate environment in our area.

“You know, the Warri port has been an issue till date. And I made complaint to him about the pipe that is giving problem at bar mouth. So he said he is going to get across to the GMD (Group Chief Executive Officer) So that they will sit, look at it on how they can relocate the pipe so that proper dredging can be carried out for vessel to flow into Warri. So those are basically the issues why I came to see him.”

Asked whether he discussed Koko port and other things with him, he said that the issues of Koko and Warri ports were discussed with President Tinubu.

He said, “Definitely once you talk about Warri port, you will definitely talk about Koko port, Sapele port but once that pipe is been sorted out because that’s where the problem is. If you don’t relocate those pipes no matter the amount of dragging the sweeping, you’ll be doing, it will still remain the problem and the marketers around that area, those of us that have facilities around the area, we have suffered a lot. So, he needs to see what they can do and he has promised that he is going to call the Minister for petroleum and see what they can do immediately with the GMD.”

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Further asked how the oil producing communities are collaborating with the federal government to nip oil theft in the bud, he said that the efforts of relevant stakeholders in the area has contributed to the drastic reduction of oil theft.

Chief Ayiri said, “Currently I know from Delta I can speak around Delta state that the issue of oil theft is drastically going down, it has reduced to about 80 to 90% because the company handling the job at the moment and some of us are involved and the job is being handled properly.

“To some extent, we’re doing good in Delta and some of these communities, the actors are being carried along. But we still want them to do more. Not just giving contracts these people need good road, good water, electricity, good hospital.

“Once those things are in place in those environment, you won’t believe you go to somewhere like Escravos the shore problem… So we need to sit down with the PIA, we need to sit down to see what we can do.

“I don’t I think fighting all these criminality issues without putting in proper infrastructure, will work, it won’t work. But telling the President you need to do this as in view of some of us coming out to agitate strongly to tell our brothers that there is no need to go into breaking of pipelines.

“But we just need to do that, we just need to fix the communities because that is the place that lays the golden eggs but if you go to that place it is like hell.I really do my things in different way, I go with protests. I will not encourage anybody to go and break federal government facility or to go and break pipe.

“Once you do that the federal government will use that same money that they want to use to develop the place, they will use it to go and fix the pipe first. So Penny wise, Pound foolish.”