There are indications that a fresh rift between two Ijaw groups might delay Shell Petroleum Development Company�s resumption of operations in the troubled Ijaw areas under its Western Area.
The multinational oil firm was expected to resume operations soon since vacating the area in February this year. This followed penultimate week�s truce with the Federated Niger Delta Ijaw Communities (FNDIC), an amalgam of oil producing communities in the Western Area led by Dr Bello Oboko. The deal was brokered by the Delta State government.
But the fresh apprehension is on the heels of an allegation by the Front for Ijaw Survival and Hope (FISH) that another Ijaw group, Iduwini National Movement for Peace and Development (INMPD), was planning to foment trouble over the agreement with Shell to resume activities.
The INMPD claimed recently that the Oboko-led FNDIC had no right to negotiate Shell�s re-entry into its Western Area on behalf of the Iduwini communities, which it said wish to deal directly with the company.
But a statement by the FISH Director of Operations, Comrade Solomon Aloba, faulted the Iduwini claim, saying the latter communities were not party to the circumstances that led to the SPDC vacating and shutting down its operations in the area.
The group also claimed that the INMPD was only acting as a cog to the oil firm�s re-entry aspirations, which it says “is without prejudice to possible avenues for resolving its problems with the company.”
It warned that it would resist the alleged bid of the INMPD to squander the development gains recorded for the Ijaw nation by the FNDIC even as it accused the Iduwini/INMPD of being “used by the SPDC to break the feared monopoly of the FNDIC, which has successfully positioned (the) SPDC to be more responsive to its social responsibilities to its host communities.”
“We are aware that in the re-entry programme, the SPDC is required to meet conditions which it probably hopes to dodge, hence the SPDC-sponsored Iduwini uprising in the company�s divide-and-rule tactics,” the group claimed.