By Festus Ahon

UGHELLI—NATIONAL President, Association of Families of Oil and Gas Producing Communities, ASFOGAPCOM, Mr. Joseph Abinogun, has called on the Federal Government to include Oil and Gas landowners in the management of the proposed 10 percent Petroleum Host Communities Fund.

Abinogun, in a statement, also called on the Federal Government to give them the right to provide security and surveillance for oil and gas facilities in their areas.
Berating stakeholders in the oil and gas industry as well as government intervention agencies for allegedly conniving with oil companies to trample upon the rights and interests of landowners, he decried the long neglect and sidelining of oil and gas landlords by government and oil companies.

The statement said, “The time has come for government and its intervention agencies to proactively engage and include oil and gas owners in their policies and programmes. No doubt, this is a reliable way of addressing the challenges of unemployment, youth restiveness and insecurity in the Niger Delta. It will also stimulate a healthy business environment for operators and stakeholders.”

Abinogun called on President Goodluck Jonathan and Mrs Deziani Alison-Madueke, Minister of Petroleum “to use their good offices to initiate policies that will activate the provisions of the Petroleum Act as well as the Local Content Act as it affects the oil and Gas Landowners as an indispensable stakeholders, whose rights and interests must be protected by relevant government agencies/parastatal in Global Memorandum of Understanding, GMoUs as well as other relevant transactions in line with global best practice.

“As we know, the crux of the proposed 10 percen Petroleum Host Communities Fund is to make stakeholders at the grassroots active participants in the oil and gas industry especially in the area of security of oil and gas facilities. As a result, nobody can provide better security to oil and gas installations than we, the landowners. We should rightly be considered because we are the party adversely impacted by oil and gas exploitation and exploration activities, as we have not only been displaced and uprooted from our native settlements but have lost our fishing and farming rights as well as other economic rights as peasants and rural dwellers without adequate compensation in line with current economic realities.”