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Vanguard: Obe youths threaten to blow up Shell flow station

By Simon Ebegbulem
Posted to the Web: Thursday, July 19, 2007

BENIN — YOUTHS of Obe community in Orhionmwon Local Government Council of Edo State have threatened to blow up the Shell flow station this weekend, should the state government fail to re-constitute the membership of the newly constituted Oil and Gas Producing Communities Commission and appoint some body from the area as the chairman.

The angry youths had last Tuesday shut down the flow station protesting the composition of the committee but with the intervention of the over one thousand mobile policemen deployed to the area by the state Police Commissioner, Mr Bala Hassan, the flow station was brought back to life against the wish of the youths.

The crisis in the area erupted after Governor Oserhiemen Osunbor sent a list of seven members and three ex-official members of the committee to the state House of Assembly for approval.

The youths insisted that as the highest oil producing community in the three oil producing Local Government Councils in the state, the area should produce the chairman of the committee.

The youths led by Prince West Ogienwonyi asserted to Vanguard in Benin, yesterday, that “because they are controlling the police and the soldiers they went and opened the flow station. But we want to say that our resolve on the issue has not changed. If by weekend and that committee is not re-constituted as we demanded, we are going to blow up the entire flow station.

“Is it because we have been keeping quiet and they think that we are fools. If one visits our community you will not know that you visited an oil producing community. They have marginalised us in infrastructural development and that is why we said we want our person to be made chairman of the commission because he knows our problems better than some body who hails from where they produce little or no oil” he argued.

http://www.vanguardngr.com/articles/2002/niger_delta/nd619072007.html

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