Segun James
11 February 2005
Warri — FORMER Minister of Information, Chief Edwin Clark has faulted government's decision to site the world largest Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) plant in-between the coastlines of Ogun and Ondo states.
The statesman said the decision smarked of ethnic favouritism in a statement he issued in Warri, Delta State yesterday.
Chief Clark wondered why the LNG plant should be built in the free coastlines of Ogun and Ondo state and not in Escravos and Brass where the gas will come from and where small plants already exist.
According to him, before 1976 when Chief Olusegun Obasanjo became a military Head of State, Ondo State was never in the league of oil producing areas.
"It was under Obasanjo military regime (1976-1979) and later that of Ernest Shonekan's interim administration that an imaginary demarcation which gave Ondo State the status of an oil producing state was made."
He stressed that the action has to this day led to a dispute before Ondo and Delta states over boundary adjustment which is yet to be solved.
Clark lamented that the decision of the Federal Government and its joint venture partners (JVP) to build "the LNG plant nearer to Ogun State, which has no oil and gas at all," has not therefore come to us as a surprise. It is another way of giving the South-West zone more investment in the oil and gas industry."
This he said is an attempt to smuggle Ogun state into the comity of oil producing states and member of the Niger Delta as Ondo, Abia and Imo States have been smuggled in simply because they produce between one per cent and five per cent of oil as against the national geographical definition of the Niger Delta.
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