The Creek Reform Warriors, a new-fangled militant group in the oil-rich Niger Delta region, has issued a two-week ultimatum to the Shell Petroleum Development Company, SPDC, to unconditionally recall local workers from Ogulagha and Odimodi communities in Delta State, sacked in 2019.
The deadly group threatened to shut down the facilities of SPDC and bring down oil production in the country to zero percent if the oil firm remained recalcitrant to the call to reinstate the helpless workers.
SPDC Media Relations Manager, Bola Essien-Nelson, did not respond to phone calls and inquiries from Vanguard reporters, who reached out to get the company’s comments on the latest development, Tuesday and Wednesday.
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Leader of the deadly group, self-styled Commander Igbokuro Tinwei, in a statement, threatened: “If these workers from Ogulagha and Odimodi communities are not recalled, all SPDC operations in the Niger Delta, including their pipelines, will be shut down. This is going to be a do or die.”
“We are not joking; we have a team of specialists in different fields. Our struggle is for the liberation of our people from the unemployment in the hands of SPDC, and other International Oil Companies, IOCs, operating in the region.
“We can boldly tell the world that all preparations and plans are on the ground to bring down the Nigerian crude oil production to zero production and this will continue until the IOCs employ our people, there will be no going back.”
“We call on the President, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu, to call Shell management to order, as the consequence of our attacks on Shell production facilities will impact negatively on the Federal Government’s ability to meet up with its crude oil supply to the world market.”
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The militant group maintained that Shell had promised to recall the workers immediately after the COVID-19 pandemic, but serially defaulted.
It said the company should not only recall and reinstate the sacked workers at the Forcados Terminal in the Ogulagha community but also open new windows for employment for qualified indigenes of the oil-producing communities.