Ondo oil producing communities assert right to NDDC positions, disown forum over ‘hatchet job’

Oil producing communities in Ondo State have reiterated the need why the state should be considered for managing director position of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC).

The communities dissociated themselves from a forum agitating for the picking of the position outside the state, condemned a “baseless group” for canvassing injustice against the state it claimed it was representing.

Speaking on behalf of the communities, the Association of Oil Mineral Producing Communities Ondo State (ASOMPCOS) yesterday said Ondo State, as the fifth oil producing state in the country is constitutionally entitled to the post. Chairman of ASOMPCOS, Pius Lepe, described a story credited to one Agbelusi Abiodun, who claimed to be speaking on behalf of a forum that is not existing in the state, as not only a ruse but baseless. He said the forum had canvassed that the injustice that has characterised the rotation of the positions of the Chairman and Managing Director of NDDC among four of the member states of the commission should continue and be sustained. “Bayelsa, Delta, Rivers and Akwa ibom have taken their turns and have also occupied the position twice leaving out Ondo State, who has never occupied the position at anytime.”

The communities said it was shocking that an unknown body that has never intervened on behalf of the people in the time of their challenges in Ondo State, will drum up newspaper support for Delta to occupy the position of Chairman and also occupy the position of the Managing Director of NDDC at the same time. Aside the non-existing forum, as stated by the communities, they added that “the fellow that arrogates the leadership of the said ‘book association’ to himself is by his action not an indigene of Ondo State and we have so established that he is from Ekiti. We therefore hope that when next the board of NDDC will be constituted, Ondo State shall take its turn of the headship of the commission. Only then will justice have been seen to be done,” they said.