By Emma Amaize, Egufe Yafugborhi & Festus Ahon
WARRI—DELTA GOVERNOR Emmanuel Uduaghan of Delta State, yesterday issued a stern warning that nobody could stop President Goodluck Jonathan from entering the state and urged the ethnic groups to maintain peace.
The governor spoke against the backdrop of alleged threat by the Ijaw in Gbaramatu Kingdom, Warri South-West Local Government Area of the state to unleash mayhem in the area if President Goodluck Jonathan did not abort his planned visit for the groundbreaking of the $16 billion Ogidigben Export Processing Zone, EPZ.
“Delta State is our state. Nobody can chase the President away from the state. Delta Gas City is a federal project that will benefit the entire Deltans and so, we are waiting for him to come and do the groundbreaking tomorrow (Friday),” he told Vanguard exclusively, yesterday.
An earlier attempt by President Jonathan, months ago, to perform the groundbreaking ceremony of the project was aborted due to squabbles over the naming of the project.
The governor said: “For the communities who are squabbling over the location of the project, there is no need fighting for the crumbs when the bigger cake is coming. The project is actually a Federal Government-driven project. It is not a state project. The intention is to harness the country’s abundant gas resources to realize its 2020 vision of becoming one of the 20 largest economies in the world. But the special thing for me and Deltans is that Delta, the Finger of God, is the host state and the impact will reverberate all over the state and country. Delta State Government is partnering with the Federal Government and other investors. We have issued a Certificate of Occupancy for the 2,700 hectares site for the Gas Revolution Industrial City. There are lots more we are going to do as the project progresses.
“The Gas City is a greenfield development built around a major central gas processing facility that will produce pipeline gas from the domestic gas market, especially for power generation, and supply gas to an industrial complex within the Gas Revolution Industrial City that will include world-scale fertilizer and petrochemical plants. Actually, the wet gas is collected, dried and turned to dry gas. Like I said, with the gas city, there will be fertilizer and petrochemical plants and the agricultural sector will be transformed because a lot of fertilizer is required for agriculture. For the petrochemical, it involves a lot of production and so, the gas city is a very huge project. It is an integral part of the Nigeria Gas Master Plan, and will serve as a model for future development elsewhere in the country. The development is being managed by the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, so you can see why I am excited. The whole idea is in consonance with our Delta-beyond-oil agenda.”
On the mobilization of communities for the project, he said: “We have tried to educate them. In fact, I had to hold a stakeholders’ meeting with the various communities and I brought technical experts on the project. They addressed them in Warri with slides and all that, telling them the gains. But you see, it will take some time, it is a process, which is why whenever we have the opportunity, we try to educate them on the many opportunities that are there, and they should look more into the future. What is coming here, once it succeeds, generations unborn will benefit so much from it.”
He said Koko in Warri North Local Government Area was to host the project, “but the anchor tenant – that is the company that will come and set up the fertilizer plant, found out when they came to assess the whole area that in the distribution of their product, it will be difficult for big ships to come into Koko. So Koko, from their findings, will be challenging for evacuation of their products, except they use smaller ships and that is not cost effective because they might run at a loss if they do that.
“The alternative was dredging the channel into Koko and from the Nigerian Ports Authority, NPA, the initial assessment, is about $1 billion to do the dredging alone. And after doing that, you are not even sure of how long it will take before the silting process starts again and it will require another dredging. Simply put, evacuation of the product will be quite complex and even the importation of the things to be used will require another location. So, Ogidigben was chosen because it has a bigger channel.”
Vanguard