The people of Idheze Community at Isoko South Local Government Area of Delta State, have threatened to close down the operations of Nigeria Agip Oil Company Limited (NAOC) in the community.
This is due to the organization’s alleged gross neglect of its responsibilities to the community in the last nine years.
Growing by a two-day yearly mini-conference held lately, the neighbourhood said it had uttered the negligence and ill-treatment from NAOC for too long and was now making final arrangements for the complete occupation of their organization’s facilities.
The Public Relations Officer (PRO) of Idheze Community Development Union(ICDU), Mr. Emmanuel Ofiemo, in a statement noted that the NAOC had revealed no indication of a fantastic corporate and socially responsible organisation within its operations locally, noting that the petroleum-producing firm hadn’t only neglected the neighbourhood but had refused to resolve many complaints over the years.
“We’ve never seen a business that is so conducive to corporate social accountability and deliberately fuel crisis. As an example, the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Idheze and NAOC died over nine years ago.
“The MoU is your files that clearly spells out the way the corporation may offer physical infrastructure amongst others. However, the company had refused to renew the expired MoU under the guise of visiting the International Memorandum of Understanding (GMoU).
“We have held a few meetings with the company that had yielded no fruits. It very obvious that NAOC isn’t prepared to come up with our community but continues to take crude oil and gasoline out of our land, which has impacted us” Offiemo said.
He revealed that while Idheze Community had reported the development into the Delta State Government, NAOC also ignored efforts by the authorities to intervene.
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“It is very obvious that NAOC isn’t prepared to listen to us despite our serene disposition. Hence, we have decided to shut down their operations until they accede to each of our demands.
“For instance, NAOC has to compensate the Idheze Community for the nine years it had operated without MoU. It has to cover the lands it acquired years ago for its operations.
“It must provide employment for our people and it has to pay all outstanding debts owed to contractors for jobs done since 2018, 2019 and 2020.
“The neighbourhood is only making closing consultations with relevant government bureaus since we consider sustaining the calm environment in our neighbourhood. After these consultations, we will occupy NAOC facilities,” he explained.
Offiemo noted that in spite of the fact that Idheze leads over 150,000 barrels of petroleum to NAOC’s generation, the company had just repaid the community with”no single job and no employment for our people.”
The PRO explained that the neighbourhood embarked on a peaceful protest in July 2020, which was suspended after NAOC guaranteed to look into their complaints.
“NAOC had pleaded that we suspend the demonstration, describing that the economic lockdown caused by Covid-19 pandemic was impacting their operations. They promise to locate answers to our own complaints.
“But nearly a year after, nothing has been done. Therefore, we have resolved to shut down their operations until NAOC accede to every our request,” he said.
