By Julius Agadaga, Yenagoa
Bayelsa State Chairman of Third Phase of the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP) and Street Coordinator for Peace across the Niger Delta, Comrade Stanley Abiri, alias Faceless’ has faulted the comments made by one Jude Gbaboyor and his cohorts l over the pipeline surveillance contract awarded by the Federal government to the Tantita Security Services Limited.
Reacting to the recent calculated media attacks on the personality of High Chief Oweizide Ekpemupolo, popularly known as Tompolo and the Tantita Security Services Ltd, a statement made available to newsmen in yenagoa, Bayelsa state capital, Comrade Abiri described as misleading and frivolous narratives claimed by Jude Gbaboyor on Arise TV as false, insisting that the troubling pattern of the attacks are increasingly being mistaken for true demands and portrayed as public interest.
According to the ex-agitator, Mr. Jude Gbaboyor and his cohorts latest intervention was an opportunistic attempt to revive relevance and wanting to cause disaffection and create new crisis in the region.
The ex-agitator noted that the latest wave of claims are not supported with any substantial reasoning but only to confuse the public, and to maliciously shape perception and influence public opinion.
He said, ” I view with concern the deliberate lies and claims made against Tompolo over a mere pipeline contract”
He dismissed the so -called claims that decentralisation of the pipeline surveillance contracts across major stakeholders in the region would attract more inclusiveness and spread community participation as untrue, saying that such claims are deliberately deployed to achieve inimical goals, generate unnecessary supremacy battles and control of rights and privileges, among others.
The ex-agitator and peace maker stated that, it was unfortunate that those who do not know anything about agitation for oil rights could make such claims and described their conduct as highly reprehensible.
Giving a background on the pipeline surveillance contract, he stated that, between 1999 and 2007, Rivers State was engulfed in cultism and other communal crisis while in Delta and Bayelsa States, the Ijaws were engaged in fighting for resource control.
He explained further that, in the cause of the struggle Tompolo adopted a different vision and operational structure in exchange of money with oil, stressing that, he went further to open camps to coordinate its activities before the federal government granted amnesty to all ex-agitators.
He maintained that within this period when the Ijaws were fighting for their rights over oil resources in their domains, the Isoko’s and Itsekiri’s where not part of the struggle, pointing out that in the course of the struggle some compatriots paid the supreme prize and others survived.
He accused those who are calling for the decentralising of
the pipeline surveillance contract of harbouring ill intension with skewed narratives overshadowed by truth.
Abiri maintained that decentralising the pipeline surveillance contract would lead to chaos and disruption of the prevailing peace in the region, noting that the current arrangement is being applauded by all and sundry.
According to him, those who are now clamouring to decentralise the contract were not genuine ex-agitators, but were into different activities in the region.
He, therefore appeal to President Bola Tinubu and the National Security Adviser, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu to ignore calls for the decentralisation of the pipeline surveillance contract.
