The National Coordinator of O’dua Peoples Congress (OPC) Gani Adams has said his faction of the OPC will not participate in the protest against the withdrawal of an NNPC contract for the protection of pipelines.
NNPC is the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation.
Punch reports that Adams, who disclosed this in an interview on Wednesday in Lagos, said protesting would not solve the problem.
“We had a meeting over the withdrawal of contract to protect the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation pipelines. Dr. Fredrick Fasheun, myself and some other persons were at the meeting. I want to state categorically that protest against withdrawal of the contract was not part of our discussion.
“It is a contract between us and the NNPC. The issue should not be misunderstood for something else. I don’t want to bring ethnicity into this matter. I don’t want people to see us in a bad light. We read the story on this protest in the newspapers like any other person. We are not part of the protest,” he said.
After the federal government under President Goodluck Jonathan had in March awarded a multibillion-naira contract to the OPC to secure NNPC pipelines in the southwest zone of the country, OPC had, on June 15, threatened to withdraw its personnel from the NNPC pipelines nationwide because they hadn’t been paid.
The pipeline surveillance contract, awarded to ex-militant leaders from the Niger Delta region and the OPC, was finally revoked by the federal government on June 16.
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