Oil workers have threatened to abandon the Niger Delta in the wake of the upsurge in violence in the oil-rich region in the last two weeks.
Babatunde Ogun, president of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) warns that oil workers will not hesitate to vacate the area, if the federal government did not put an end to the violence in the region, he told NEXT in a telephone interview on Monday.
Mr Ogun said: “if there is no solution to this unending killings and destruction of properties, we will have no choice other than to abandon the area.” Oil workers had threatened to back out many times in the past, but were always convinced to remain after government’s intervention.
Insecurity in the Niger Delta has led to the kidnap of expatriate oil workers for ransom. But with few foreigners left in the region, kidnappers have turned their attention to members of the oil workers union, and their families.
Most oil company executives who have to live in the Niger Delta, now do so without their families for fear that they might be kidnapped for ransom.
The union’s president said his members desired peace in the oil-rich region to enable them carry out their duties without fear, adding that the union “would withdraw its members if they were no longer safe.”
“We are watching and waiting for what the government will do” says Mr. Ogun.
The union also urges the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), the main militant group in the region, to stop kidnapping people and destroying property.
The union argued that the violence is counter-productive and it is defeating MEND’s claim of marginalisation of the Niger Delta and its demand for government’s increased attention to the region.
PENGASSAN notes that if MEND’s agitations were properly channelled, the resolution of the conflicts in the area would be faster.