Pipeline surveillance: Tompolo meets N’Delta traditional rulers, allocates 40% to women

In a bid to execute his new pipeline surveillance contract, leader of the defunct Movement for Emancipation of Niger Delta (MEND), High Chief Government Ekpemupolo, otherwise known as Tompolo, has met with Niger Delta traditional rulers largely of Ijaw stock drawn from Delta, Edo, Ondo, Bayelsa and Rivers states.

The meeting, which other stakeholders also attended, held at Oporoza, the ancestral headquarters of Gbaramatu kingdom in Warri South-West Local Government Area of Delta State on Thursday last week.

The meeting aligns with the ongoing efforts by Tompolo to find a lasting solution to the perennial menace of crude oil theft, pipeline vandalism and prevent environmental pollution in the region.

The Federal Government and the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) had signed a contract of N4 billion with Tompolo to assist the nation in curbing illegal bunkering, illegal crude oil refining and other forms of oil and gas-related theft in the Niger Delta.

Following the contractual agreement, Tompolo has played host to thousands of his admirers on solidarity visits and has started recruiting youths, including men and women from various communities in Bayelsa, Delta, Rivers, Ondo and other Niger Delta states who will assist in the project.

The surveillance men who will be recruited, it was gathered, will have their wages paid directly to them and also assist in achieving the set objectives.

Tompolo was awarded a similar contract under President Goodluck Jonathan-led administration, where he reportedly performed excellently with crude oil production on the rise.

Addressing journalists, Tompolo affirmed that all Niger Deltans will be carried along, with women taking 40 per cent and men, 60 per cent share of the jobs, while admonishing those who are aggrieved to sheathe their swords.

“My plan for the Niger Delta is to carry everybody along. You know people doing illegal bunkering usually come through fire (sic) that is even destroying our environment more than what they are benefiting.

“So we are now together with everybody, women, our fathers, our wives, our children to see that we follow the right path. We do not have any other country to call our own.

“This is our country. Nigeria is our own and that is the reason we do not want to be a second class citizens because we produce the oil that feeds everybody in this nation,” he averred.

The pipeline security surveillance contract, according to Tompolo, had started since September 4.