Acting President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, has assured oil producing communities in Edo state of Federal Government support in resolving the development challenges in the area.
Osinbajo gave the assurance during a stakeholders’ meeting with oil-producing communities at New Era College in Benin on Monday.
He said that the Federal Government was aware of the problems in the communities and was making efforts to resolve them.
‘’The Federal government has gone into partnership with host communities as they represent the future of the country.
‘’Our visits to all oil-producing communities in the country is to understand the problems in these communities and seek new vision for the communities,’’ he said.
The acting president also said that no fewer than 4,000 graduates from the states were captured under the Federal Government N-Power graduate initiate and that some of them had been deployed to oil-producing communities.
He said that the Amnesty Programme was not for selected communities, adding that the government would ensure that all host communities benefited from it.
He vowed that all abandoned projects in host communities would be completed, assuring that any contractor that had embezzled funds would be prosecuted.
Osinbajo lauded the host communities for being peaceful in the past 40 years as there had not been issues of oil theft and pipeline vandalism in Edo.
Earlier, the state governor, Mr Godwin Obaseki, said that there were 38 oil-producing communities and 205 oil wells in the state.
Obaseki said that the state was ready to work with the Federal Government to bring more development to the oil-producing areas.
According to him, the state government will engage the youths trained by the amnesty programme in its agricultural initiative.
‘’The state will no longer allow any federal agency or parasatal to execute programmes which do not meet up with the state’s master plan,’’ he said.
The governor appealed to the acting president to schedule another visit to the state to assess the level of development in the oil producing communities.
(NAN)
