PIA: Bayelsa Community Leaders Reject Calls for Separate Host Community Devt Trust

Olusegun Samuel in Yenagoa

Leaders and chiefs of Amatu II community in Ekeremor Local Government Area of Bayelsa State have rejected purported demands by some communities under the Estuaries Area (EA) oil field operated by Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) for a separate Host Community Development Trust (HCDT) of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA).

 The PIA provides for the incorporation of HCDT in oil and gas-producing communities where oil/gas companies are mandated to make an annual contribution to the HCDT of an amount equal to  three  per cent of the company’s actual annual operating expenditure of the preceding financial year for developmental projects in the host communities.

Some community leaders have reportedly informed SPDC that they would not want to be clustered alongside other communities of the EA oil field under one HCDT, a demand that has been rejected by a section of chiefs and elders of Amatu II Community

In a statement issued in Yenagoa yesterday by some chiefs and elders of Amatu II Community and signed by Chief Oweipade, they said the purported request for a separate HCDT is coming as a surprise to the people of the EA host communities, particularly Amatu II Community, who are well known for their prowess in multinational oil companies, government, and community relations and administrations.

Oweipade said: “Amatu I, Amatu II, Besangbene, Letugbene, Azamabiri, Orobiri, and Ogbeintu communities seeking a separate HCDT should be ignored because the people of Amatu II situated directly opposite the sea Eagle, which the acronym EA was founded has never sat in a meeting to deliberate and agree to go into a separate HCDT with the aforementioned communities.

“Amatu II Community is not a ghost community neither a fishing camp that its leaders can sit in a hotel room or drinking bars to take decisions and expect such decisions to be binding on every person.

 “To this purpose, the good people of Amatu II are stating it categorically that they are not a party to any separation, so SPDC and the public should take note.

“You cannot shift the goalpost in the middle of a game because the said advocates of separation were those who have already recommended their BoT members to the 16-member community HCDT board, where elections of the chairman was conducted and concluded but all because their unpopular candidate lost out, and instead of accepting defeat, they are opting for separation, which is childish, anti-developmental, un-educative, and unprofessional, but for selfish aggrandisement,  we the people of Amatu II will not fold our arms and watch.”

He added: “Even if the good people of Amatu II deem it fit to seek a separation, it will not be with a community like Azamabiri whose existence is questionable. Let us lecture the advocates of the separation theory if truly such advocates mean good for the Iduwini kingdom, that clusters or institutions or associations are found on either ancestry backgrounds or common laws benefits or coercion, but since we have been put together as a group based on common law’s benefits by the government and SPDC, we are good with it.

“But if this association of common law’s benefits fails in the future, we cannot practice another common law benefits, instead, we will embrace ancestry backgrounds which Azamabiri, Orobiri and Ogbeintu do not belong to and will never ever belong to, because we are Iduwini people.”,