*As Sen Jimoh raises alarm over erosion threat to community
By George Mgbeleke
Disturbed by the incessant sea incursions ravaging Ayetoro community in Ondo State, the Senate, on Tuesday, mandated its Committee on Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, when constituted, to investigate the multi-billion shoreline contract awarded by the commission in 2006 with a view to finding an alternative solution where necessary, to stem the dangerous slide.
It also directed the Committees on NDDC, Environment and Ecology, when constituted, to interface with relevant ministries to work out modalities for instant interventions in the disaster.
Similarly, the Red Chamber asked the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited, SPDC and other oil companies to help in saving lives and properties of the people as well as improving various aspects of the community through their corporate social responsibility, CRS.
These resolutions followed a motion on “Urgent need for intervention to arrest the incessant sea incursion ravaging Ayetoro community in Ondo State” by Senator Jimoh Ibrahim (APC Ondo South) during Tuesday’s plenary.
Leading debate on the motion, Senator Ibrahim noted that Ayetoro community and its environs in Ilaje Local Government Area, accounts for 5.4% of the 60,000 barrel per day of the state’s crude oil production output, amounting to about 3.7% of Nigeria’s total oil production, which ranks Ondo as the 5th oil producing state under the NDDC Act.
He, therefore, lamented that “devastating sea incursions and ocean surges have been the albatross of Ayetoro community for over two decades with hundreds of homes and properties being destroyed annually, resulting in the displacement of indigenes of the community and consequently, in the disruption of oil exploration in the area.”
Senator Ibrahim added that “the surges have become an annual occurrence that successive governments have failed to attend to and serving, as daily reminder to the indigenes of Ayetoro that the community is gradually slipping into the belly of the Atlantic Ocean.”
The lawmaker further expressed concern that NDDC had just four years after its creation in 2004, attempted “to stem the slide by awarding the contract for the construction of a shoreline protective wall designed with a geo-tube technology in Ayetoro to Gallet Nigeria Limited at an original contract sum of N6.4billion, of which 25% was reportedly paid.”
According to him, the contract was revoked in 2009 for alleged lack of capacity and re-awarded to the Dredging Atlantic Limited at an undisclosed cost, lamenting that there’s nothing on ground to show any intervention by the government 11 years after the new contract took over and 16 years after it was first awarded.
He was, therefore, worried that Ayetoro is on the verge of being completely lost to the sea if nothing is done urgently.
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