To ensure that the success of the just concluded amnesty offer by the Federal Government is sustained, all the players in the upstream petroleum sector have pledged to support the post-amnesty programmes.
At a meeting on Tuesday at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) Towers in Abuja, Rilwanu Lukman, the Minister of Petroleum Resources, the representatives of the international oil companies (IOCs), the NNPC, and the indigenous oil companies, unanimously resolved to sustain the gains of the amnesty offer.
“I don’t need to over emphasise what we have lost as a government and as operators in the Niger Delta during the dark days of militancy,” Mr. Lukman said. “But we must look ahead and take concrete steps to avoid a reoccurrence of the ugly past.”
Mr. Lukman challenged the operators of the industry to come up with a post-amnesty package, which will ensure that the youth of the Niger Delta are not tempted to go back to the creeks.
After the minister’s call for the operators to complement the government’s effort at sustaining peace in the volatile oil-rich region, Mohammed Sanusi Barkindo, the Group Managing Director of the NNPC, pledged to work with the foreign oil companies and other key operators in the oil and gas industry to develop the Niger Delta region.
“The challenge for us today is to identify concrete ways and means within our mandate to sustain and promote the overall objective of Mr. President. We must look into the area of capacity limitation of the youths so as to assist them in acquiring the relevant skills that will make them marketable in the industry,” Mr. Barkindo said.
The IOCs offer support
Responding on behalf of the Shell Petroleum Development Company, the most affected by the actions of the militants over the years, Mutiu Sumonu, the managing director, emphasised the need to work on the minds of the erstwhile militants through a well structured re-orientation programme.
“Once proper re-orientation is achieved, we can now move to the next stage, which is integration. But in all these we must work as a group by galvanising our efforts to achieve greater impact,” Mr. Sumonu said.
Earlier, Peter Voser, Shell’s chief executive officer, had said the company will provide training and assistance to some of the former militants who accepted the amnesty offer. Mr. Voser made this offer when he visited President Umar Yar’Adua in Abuja last week.
He also said the company is willing to use its small and medium scale enterprise fund to assist the repentant militants in setting up businesses of their own.
Similar sentiments were echoed by the representatives of Exxon/Mobil, Addax Petroleum, Total, Oando, and ENI-ConocoPhillips.
The consensus is that to achieve meaningful peace and progress in the region, attention must be paid to opening up the Niger Delta in such a way that the youth will be empowered to build and maximise their capacity.
Special post-amnesty committee formed
As a result, Emmanuel Egbogah, Special Adviser to the President on Petroleum Matters, was appointed to chair a newly formed com mittee, the Special Oil Industry Committee on Post Amnesty, to consolidate the gains of the amnesty programme by working with all the operators to ensure that peace and development is brought to the impov erished but oil-rich Niger Delta.
In his remarks, Mr. Egbogah promised to ensure that everything is done to achieve the cardinal objectiv es of the Federal Government’s post-amnesty plan.
The committee has members from the NNPC, the IOCs, and from the indigenous oil companies.