Intervenes in Oil spill protest:

* How Eket Senator persuaded aggrieved youths

The Senator representing Akwa Ibom South at the upper chambers of the National Assembly, Chief Helen Esuene has intervened in the protest against Exxon Mobil by the youths of the Area.

The Senator’s intervention led to the putting off of the over three day protest where the youths had accused Exxon Mobil of insincerity and high handedness towards the host communities. A situation that led to the crumbling of Exxon Mobil activities until the Distinguished Senator arrived from Abuja last Friday.

Upon her arrival from Abuja, Esuene who is also the Senate Committee Chairman on Youth and Women Affairs held a meeting with the youth leaders and Chiefs of the communities.  The meeting lasted well over an hour and twenty minutes at the Villa Marina residence of the Distinguished Senator.

At the meeting, each speaker was allowed to air their grievances against Exxon Mobil.  Some of which were that the Oil Company had tried to hide the incidence (latest Oil spill) from them.

After exhaustive deliberations, Senator Esuene had appealed to the aggrieved youths to allow peace a chance as she was going to talk with Exxon Mobil as well as present their demands to the Company.
The youths unanimously agreed to the Senator’s appeal and thanked her for coming all the way to settle the matter, noting that her motherly and timely intervention had saved the day.

The aggrieved youths were quick to acknowledge the services of Mrs. Esuene which they described as legendary and prayed God’s blessings on her while calling on other leaders of Eket to emulate the senator’s gestures.

Speaking to newsmen after the meeting with the youths and elders, Helen Esuene said, “I heard about the blockage a couple of days ago and the activities of Exxon Mobil here in Eket is very crucial to the economy of Nigeria, that is what makes Akwa Ibom the highest oil producing state in the whole country and any activity to disrupt its operations is very crucial and important and should be controlled. 

And since it is happening at my very front here, I needed to come down and talk to the youths and address them and impress upon them the need to call off the blockage and allow peace to reign.  This I have done as we have just finished a meeting with the youth leaders.

I commend them that they conducted a violence free protest.  They have made their points very clear which I have already highlighted to Exxon Mobil and I am still going to talk to them at length more on this and the issues are two. 

One was the slight they felt for Exxon Mobil not informing them of the Oil Spill only informing one Local Government.  They felt slighted and they didn’t like it.  That’s one of the reasons.  The second reason was the non-release of funds to execute the special community project that amounted to six billion and that project was promised the core Local Government Areas.  

A lot of activities have gone into it such as retaining consultants, identifying projects and after all of that, there is no money to commence the projects.  So these two are the remote and immediate causes of the protest”.

Against this background, Senator Esuene also said she was going to talk to Exxon Mobil to live up to their promises to the communities, noting that the communities have suffered a lot of degradation.  

She said, “You cannot quantify the amount of environmental degradation and problems that these communities bear due to their (Exxon Mobil) operations here.  You cannot quantify it in terms of naira and kobo.  And so when promises are made, they should be kept so that the communities can continue to be a healthy partner to them as they have always been.  So this in a nutshell is what brought me to Eket and I am happy that we have been able to have useful discussions with the youth leaders and they have promised that they will dismantle the road blocks and disperse the youths to enable Mobil to continue with their work”.

Speaking further, Helen Esuene said she is also going to take the matter beyond the managers of Mobil and will pursue it to the top to avoid somebody forgetting their obligation to the communities.

Amongst those who attended the meeting were Godwin Nduaesa Eket youth leader, the vice Chairman of Eket LGA, youth leaders from all across Eket amonst some chiefs of the host communities