Eastern Ijaw ex-militants have rejected the multi-billion naira pipeline surveillance contract awarded to their Western Ijaw colleague, Government Ekpemupolo, popularly known as Tompolo by the federal government.
The rejection was conveyed in a statement by the Kalabari National Assembly which described itself as a struggle platform established in 2019 for the aim of restoring the stolen sovereignty, livelihood, lost dignity and lost economic prosperity of the New Calabar City-State.
Engr. Dabotubo G. Agiobu, coordinator of the Kalabari National Assembly said the assembly has made it their responsibility to stubbornly fight against the injustice being inflicted upon Kalabari people regardless of the place such injustice emanates from.
“The advocates of the prestigious Kalabari National Assembly based at home and in the diaspora, being fully knowledgeable of the four billion naira per month oil pipeline surveillance contract awarded to five different companies, has resolved to staunchly object to and protest the exclusion, discrimination and side-lining of Kalabari indigenes from surveillance contracts in Kalabari land and the imposition of Non-Kalabari indigenes to infiltrate Kalabari territorial waterways and control the economic resources of Kalabari people.
“The Kalabari National Assembly views this unjust contract as another pathetic attempt made by the occupationist Nigerian state to foment conflict in the Niger Delta between Kalabari people and their Ijaw kith across other regions in the delta.
“We want to assure the NNPC and their contractors that no oil pipeline within Kalabari land will be in the custodianship of an individual who is not a Kalabari son or daughter as we are preparing our community youths, women and elders all across the affected Kalabari communities to resist and frustrate all attempts made by the NNPC’s chosen contractor to operate in Kalabari Kingdom.
“The Kalabari people have done it before not long ago, and we are prepared to do it again”.
It said that “awarding surveillance contracts for oil pipelines within Kalabari Kingdom to Government Ekpemupolo’s (Tompolo) Global West company when there are already better qualified crucial stakeholders from Kalabari who had bid for the same contract as Tompolo is the highest level of disrespect, betrayal and deprivation towards Kalabari people on the part of the Nigerian minister of state petroleum, Mr Timipre Sylva who is an Ethnic-Ijaw, collaborating with the oppressive Nigerian state to dispossess our people of our wealth.
“Today the Kalabari National Assembly is apprising the NNPC and its contractor Mr. Government Ekpemupolo of Global West Company to cede the protection of oil pipelines in Kalabari Kingdom for the Kalabari people apropos of averting unnecessary conflict and confusion in the Niger Delta, resulting from this discriminatory, unfair and biased contract”.
