BY FESTUS AHON
UGHELLI— MANAGEMENT of the Shell Petroleum Development Company, SPDC, has been given one week ultimatum by the people of Umolo-Olomu, Ughelli South Local Government Area, to disband the executive of the Ughelli South 2 Cluster  Development Board, CDB,  it allegedly inaugurated illegally under the Global Memorandum of Understanding.

The people in a letter  to the Head, Community Affairs, SPDC West, Warri, vowed to stop the activities of the multi-national oil company in their land if their demand was not met before the expiration of the ultimatum.

The people in the letter  by Mr. Benjamin Ebite, Engr S. U Akpeh, and Mr. John Mevayovo, the community’s President General, Secretary General and Spokesman, respectively, said the community “sees the whole affair as an evil orchestration and an unholy collaboration between some communities.”

Charging the company to initiate a process to bring in proper executives in which Umolo representatives on the CDB would actively participate in accordance with the terms of the Global Memorandum of Understanding(GMOU) to which Umolo community was a signatory and major stakeholder, it distance itself from every relationship in respect to the  Ughelli South 2 SPDC-GMOU Cluster.

The people in the letter said; “Umolo-Olomu, a category ‘A’ oil producing community in the Ughelli South 2 (SPDC/GMOU) Cluster  received with great shock and strong sense of disregard, the purported inauguration of an illegal executive  for  Ughelli South 2 Cluster  Development Board on Tuesday, June 7 2011 without any prior notice to Umolo Community through its representatives, i.e, Umolo Community Trust (CT) members, especially the CT Chairman and Secretary who according to the tenets of the Global Memorandum of Understanding(GMOU) are automatic members of the CDB.

“Umolo community, not being part of whatever arrangement on the issue of Ughelli South 2  CDB Exco selection that eventually culminated in the gathering of evil where SPDC purportedly made inauguration in respect of  Ughelli South 2 CDB in which Umolo community- the only other Category ‘A’ community apart from Okpare-Olomu is being shortchanged.