By Ikenna Orioha
Concerned youths and women of Obile autonomous community in Ohaji/Egbema LGA of Imo State have staged a peaceful protest, accusing Seplat Petroleum Development Company Limited of abandoning them despite huge resources it explores from their ancestral land.
They said since Seplat started oil operation at Adapalm Plantation, Ohaji, it has never recognized them in terms of social amenities such as road, electricity, pipe borne water, hospital, youth and women employment, empowerment, regretting that their community is underdeveloped, youths wallowing in the streets due largely to lack of job opportunities, among other needs and debilitating factors.
The people who staged the peaceful protest at Seplat Oil base at Adapalm Plantation, Ohaji, on Tuesday and Wednesday respectively, through the Obile Youth President, Youth President of Concerned Youths of Ohaji People’s Forum and CLO to the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs, Imo State, Comrade Victor kelvin Amadi, urged Seplat to do the needful and stop neglecting, cheating and shortchanging the host community, who he added cannot rest until their demands are squarely and timely met.
Amadi hinted that Obile autonomous community owns 80% land of Adapalm Plantation where Seplat has base, lamenting that the agrarian people of Obile and the environs are finding life difficult given to the oil spillage which he pointed out pollutes their land, making their soil less fertile.
“We, the people of Obile autonomous community are here to protest against sheer neglect by Seplat. It has not done anything for us since it started excavated oil from our land. Obile owns 80% of land in Adapalm Plantation and yet none of our youth is given job, nor any woman being financially empowered.
“Seplat is operating in our land without our notice. We want to know why. What wrong we committed that warrants them to neglect us, cheat us, shortchange us, allow our community to remain underdeveloped. By Seplat’s action, we see it as causing, promoting crime and insecurity in our area. It wants the youth to be restive in demanding their rights.
“We have been peaceful, law-abiding, friendly and accommodating. No oil bunkery, no criminal activities. In fact, Seplat is not doing well. For Seplat not to provoke us to restiveness, it should do the needful: Employ our people, install solid infrastructures, give scholarship to our students to study home and overseas, pay us bursary monthly. We will be happy, prosperously lively”, Amadi stated.
