Minister for Niger Delta affairs Godswill Akpabio on Thursday paid a surprise visit to the ex-militant leader Government Ekpemupolo alias Tompolo at his Oporoza, Gbaramatu Kingdom country home in Delta State.
Sources said Akpabio’s mission was to appeal to Tompolo to soft-pedal on his earlier seven-day ultimatum issued to the Federal Government to constitute a substantive board for the Niger Delta Development Commission.
Tompolo had in a signed statement on Sunday threatened that failure to inaugurate the board of the NDDC within seven days would lead to total shutdown of oil facilities in the region, which would in turn cripple the economy of the country.
Akpabio was earlier received at the Osubi airstrip in Warri by the deputy governor of Delta State, Kingsley Otuaro, and his younger brother, Dennis, as well as some senior military officers.
The minister then moved in a boat to Oporoza, where he had a closed-door meeting with his host.
Meanwhile, scores of Urhobo youths, under the aegis of the Urhobo Progress Union Youth Wing, on Thursday, shut down the Delta State office of the NDDC located in Warri South Local Government Area of the state.
The shutdown of the NDDC facility is coming barely five days after their Itsekiri counterparts issued a 14-day ultimatum to the Federal Government “to do the needful,” failure of which they threatened to make the Niger Delta region ungovernable.
The youth barricaded the entrance to the community and vowed that they would not leave the NDDC office until the Federal Government constituted and inaugurated a substantive board, whose members had already been screened by the Senate.
Their leader, Efemena Umukoro, faulted the idea of appointing a sole administrator for the NDDC just as he also urged President Muhammadu Buhari to immediately sack Akpabio and order a probe of his tenure.
Umukoro stated, “We are saying enough is enough. We are saying that one man cannot trade with the interests of the entire region. This is not about Urhobo, but about the entire Niger Delta region. One man cannot be the EDP. One man cannot be the Executive Director. One man cannot be the MD. We are saying no. We are saying this for fairness and equity and justice.
“We are saying that President Muhammadu Buhari’s Federal Government should inaugurate the substantive board.”
