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PENGASSAN to write FG on Niger Delta security
By Wisdom Patrick
Senior
Correspondent, Lagos
The Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of
Nigeria (PENGASSAN) at the weekend took a swipe at the Federal Government over
the security situation in the Niger Delta just as the union resolved that it
would soon write to the relevant authorities on the issue.
National President of PENGASSAN, Comrade Brown Ogbeifun who
was a special guest at the book launch of the General Secretary of his sister
union in the oil industry the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas
Workers (NUPENG) made this known to Daily Independent stressing that over the
years, the union and Nigerians alike have watched how government play politics
with lives and properties of the people of the Niger Delta.
“NUPENG and PENGASSAN would start doing something
about the state of insecurity in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. We cannot
continue like this because, this country belong to all of us”.
Ogbeifun said that for too long, government security
appointees have held the region to ransom in their bid to provide security,
when in the actual sense, government and its agents are the ones playing
politics with the region and argued that no investor will want to go to an
environment where his life would be under constant threat and where his
investments will not be safe as a result of insecurity.
The PENGASSAN boss said the union appreciates the policy of
deregulation but added that his union will not campaign for its full
implementation now because, there was no enabling environment for it to thrive
now. He faulted President Olusegun Obasanjo on the issue of refineries. The
President had said that the nations refineries could not be sold to private
investors because of their over bloated work force.
But Ogbeifun said, “that is not the problem, because
the investor cannot come and invest under the atmosphere of insecurity. You
have to provide the enabling environment. The pipeline that burst years ago
have not been repaired, equipment at the refineries have all broken down. So
tell me who that investor that will want to put his money under that
condition”.
He called on the Federal Government to take the issue of
security in the Niger Delta serious adding, no nation with its right thinking
leaders would abandon or neglect the goose that lay the golden egg.
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