A group, Concerned Nigerians for Good Governance, has kicked against the fragmentation of oil pipeline surveillance along ethnic lines, saying it is inimical to national security and the country’s economy.
The group was responding to a publication in one of the national dailies in which a human rights activist, Fejiro Oliver, called for the decentralization of oil pipeline surveillance jobs to accommodate ethnic groups in the Niger Delta region.
But the national coordinator of the group, Awipi Lawson in a statement on Saturday, said that the call by Oliver was not only faulty but a misrepresentation of the Local Content Act.
Lawson argued that the Local Content Act did not prescribe the balkanization of the nation’s security architecture along ethnic lines but recommended inclusion and participation of all Nigerians.
He said: “First, the Nigerian Local Content Act does not prescribe the balkanization of security architecture.
“The Act promotes Nigerian participation in commercial oil and gas activities, procurement, services, fabrication, manpower development, not the ethnic carving up of critical national security functions.
“Pipeline surveillance is a security operation tied to intelligence, response time, coordination and deterrence. To weaponize the Local Content Act to demand ethnic control of security corridors is a gross misreading of the law.
“Second, the suggestion that “every tribe should manage pipelines in their localities” is operationally illiterate. Pipelines do not respect ethnic boundaries.
“They traverse rivers, creeks, forests and inter-community corridors. Effective protection requires unity of command, shared intelligence, logistics and rapid response, not a patchwork of competing local fiefdoms. Fragmentation would reopen the very gaps criminals exploit.
“Since the current surveillance framework was strengthened, crude oil output has rebounded, vandalism has dropped and waterways once notorious for armed robbery have become safer for residents and commerce”.
He further said: “Serious policy debate demands facts, performance benchmarks, response metrics, community employment figures and oversight mechanisms. Anything less is noise masquerading as advocacy.
“Inclusion is not achieved by destruction. If the concern is community participation, the solution is enforceable local hiring quotas, transparent procurement, skills training, periodic audits and sanctions for non-compliance, all within a coordinated security framework. That is reform. What is being proposed instead is chaos.
“We must state this plainly, Nigeria’s energy security is not a playground for personal crusades. The Niger Delta has paid too high a price in blood, lost revenue and environmental damage to return to an era of disjointed control and opportunistic agitation”.
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