Speaking when members of Ukoko R’Ivie R’Urhobo which is the umbrella body of government recognised traditional rulers from Delta Central Senatorial District paid him a congratulatory visit yesterday [21-7-15] at Government House, Asaba, the Governor observed that allocations to the state from the Federation Account was always affected when crude oil from the state are lost due to pipeline vandalism.He disclosed that in April, 2015, the state lost three million barrels of crude oil as a result of criminal attacks on oil pipelines, noting that as such, revenue accruing to the state as a result of its oil output was reduced.
“I want to say to Deltans that we should be more vigilant against pipleline vandals, they are doing us a lot of disservice because for the indices that has been sent to us, we lost in the month of April alone about three million barrels of oil, it will reflect in this July allocation that will be sent to us. We lost as much as three million barrels that would have been accounted for through Delta State because of that action that happened in April,” he stated, adding, “in the revenue allocation we are going to lose an equivalent of three million barrels that would have come to the state, so, when it comes to the issue of derivation, instead of the eleven million barrels that we were supposed to produce as a state for the month of April, we have about eight million barrels and that definitely is going to affect us so much in the allocation we are going to have this month, so, we pray that our brothers and young ones will try to cooperate with us to ensure that we don’t have such things reoccurring in the future.”
The Governor who took time to explain to the traditional rulers the activities of his administration since inception, said, the amendment bill for the Delta State Oil Producing Area Development Commission (DESOPADEC) which has passed through public hearing was to make the organisation more effective in meeting with the needs of oil producing communities.
According to him, “we are not going to do anything in secrecy, in my inaugural speech, we made it clear that we will strengthen DESOPADEC along the NDDC (Niger Delta Development Commission) pattern, we want to ensure that we have a structured management system that would not be based on ethnic sentiments, the Commissioners from different ethnic nationalities will be members of the Board where they will present issues concerning their ethnic nationalities while the management which is insulated from ethnic politics implements policies reached.”
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