Onuesoke urges FG to relocate multinational oil companies to N’Delta

ByNosa Akenzua

Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Chieftain and former Delta State gubernatorial aspirant, Chief Sunny Onuesoke has called on the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) to relocate the headquarters of Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and all multinational oil companies operating in the Niger Delta to the region.

Onuesoke resonates with the demand concerning the recent Federal Government order for the relocation of the headquarters of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria to Lagos State.

The environmental activist who made the call yesterday while addressing an airport correspondent at Asaba International Airport, Asaba, Delta state during a return trip from a climate change seminar in Lagos said the relocation of the headquarters of the multinational oil companies from Lagos to the Niger Delta region is long overdue.

He recalled that on September 2021 the Senate passed a resolution for the relocation of multinational oil companies o the Niger Delta region, adding that since then the matter had been swept under the carpet.

Onuesoke insisted that before the headquarters of CBN and FAAN would be relocated to Lagos as ordered by the Federal Government, the issue of relocation of headquarters of multinational oil companies from Lagos to the Niger Delta region should be resolved in a case of first come, first serve.

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According to him, “Most multinational and Nigerian oil and gas companies operating in the Niger Delta region had relocated their headquarters and operational bases to Lagos, citing security concerns and restiveness in the Niger Delta. Presently, all that had changed. The Niger Delta region is now more peaceful than Lagos and other parts of the country.

” The Niger Delta people cannot continue to accept this kind of injustice. You can’t milk oil from our soil and then be paying royalty to another state (s) that don’t produce oil and gas. It is not done anywhere in the world. Communities in the Niger Delta region are the hen that lay the golden eggs, they should be allowed to benefit from it.

” The people of the Niger Delta must be treated fairly and must participate fully in the oil and gas sector. We must get our due benefits and not the usual crumbs. We must renegotiate the modus operandi of the oil companies with particular to the well-being of the Niger Delta people that are hosting these companies.”