A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Mr Raymos Guanah, has urged the Federal Government to expand the scope of the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP) to include individuals engaged in crude oil theft and illegal refineries.
Guanah, a former Delta Commissioner for Lands, Surveys and Urban Development in Delta, said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Thursday in Asaba.
He said that expanding the scope of the programme would help to check vandalism and oil theft in the Niger Delta.
Guanah commended President Bola Tinubu for appointing Dr Dennis Otuaro as the Administrator of PAP.
“With his background and coping with this few weeks in office, it is clear that he knows what to do.
“However, I want to advocate that the scope of the amnesty office be enlarged and there is also need to increase the finances of the office,” he said.
Guanah said that the amnesty office was created because there were lots of challenges in the Niger Delta.
“People were doing all kinds of kidnapping, troubling of oil companies workers among others. So amnesty succeeded in telling that.
”And I’m not sure that in the last 10 to 15 years, we’ve heard of oil companies workers being kidnapped.
”We have not also heard of oil installation attacks. Some of these things have not been happening since the amnesty programme started.
“However, there is a new wave of the challenges we have and these challenges include going to burst pipelines to collect crude oil and refine it illegally and this is another challenge entirely,” he said.
Guanah added: ”The persons who are doing this are doing it against risks, and danger to the economy and the society.
”Many of them end up getting burnt and losing their lives in the process. They damage the environment in the process and government losses revenue in the process.
”So, expanding the scope of the amnesty office by capturing, harvesting those boys who are engaged in bursting oil pipelines to get crude refined in their local refineries.
”When the government expand the scope of the office to identify them, there is also need to educate them to stop such acts.”
He said that expansion would empower it to establish Modular Refineries which would in turn encourage the boys also set up such modular refineries since that was what they wanted to do.
”Through this process, the government an also assist them with loans so that they don’t think it is a free gift.
”And before then, the government would have brought them together for training, educate them on the relevant skills and knowledge involved in refinery,” he said.
Guanah said that government should be interested on how individuals engaged in illegal oil refining were able to refine the products.
“This is even when the big refineries are having challenges. This gives regards to the native intelligence to be tapped from. So the government can build on this native intelligence to build or develop Modular Refineries.
”With this, we will now have several refineries across the country rather than having only three functional refineries.
”By the grace of God, I have been to California in the United States of America and with my findings they have more than 50 refineries in that state.
”Nigeria as a whole does not have three functional refineries.
”Therefore, I posite that the scope of the amnesty office should be expanded to identify persons involved in the crude oil theft and engage them meaningfully. ‘:
