FG will no longer tolerate sabotage of oil pipelines -Sylva
The Federal Government has warned that it would no longer tolerate deliberate sabotage oil pipelines by unscrupulous persons.
Minister of State for Petroleum, Chief Timipre Sylva, who issued the warning while playing host to the management team of the Daily Times Newspaper in his office on Monday, said that the President Muhammadu Buhari administration would not stomach the destruction of critical oil assets in the country.
While revealing that the issue of compensation of oil bearing communities has always been a topmost priority of the president, the minister however said that it would no longer be business as usual for those who engage in vandalisation of oil pipelines and other criminal activities.
He cautioned that henceforth, all issues of oil spillage would be thoroughly investigated to ascertain whether the spill occurred naturally or it was caused by human activities.
‘’The Federal Government has done a lot for oil bearing communities. I am from the an oil producing state and nobody will be in doubt that my state is an oil producing state but look at the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), it was established to deal with this same issue of compensation and development for the oil bearing communities.
‘’Unfortunately, trillions of naira spent there have gone into private pockets. So these investigations has to be done first to ascertain that the fault is from the oil companies before any compensation would be made.
“Before we came on board, there was a lot of impunity. Before now there was a situation where crude oil was sold and the proceeds were diverted.
“You are a living witness to that. It is a very recent history; crude oil was sold and the country didn’t see the proceeds; it went into private accounts but that can’t happen again because of the Treasury Single Account (TSA).
“Everything goes into the account and everybody can see it.
“Leakages have been blocked. If we are to have the windfall today, Nigeria will see the benefits”, he said.
Earlier, Managing Director, Daily Times newspaper, Mr. Aliu Akoshile while unveiling the rebranding process the paper is currently undergoing, said that the team is taking the paper to new heights.
“We came with the mandate to revive, rebrand and expand the horizon of the newspaper.
“The mandate is not just to bring back the old Daily Times of Nigeria because the old has gone.
“When Daily Times was at the peak, there was no internet, there was no digital.
‘’Our mandate is to take the paper to the status. We have started that by going strictly into the digital space. Our online presence is very strong. We receive comments from Nigeria and abroad”, he said.
SOURCE: DailyTimesPolitics
