A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and leader of Kogi Concerned Citizens (KCC), Chief Sumaila Adamu Jadams has appealed to President Muhammadu Buhari to recognize and list Kogi State as the 11th Oil Producing State in Nigeria to stop the hostility between the neighbouring communities bordering the oil well from Kogi and Anambra states.

Chief Jadams made the call while addressing journalists shortly after the KCC Annual Conference in Abuja over the lingering rampage between the people of Ibaji and other communities bordering the oil well.

Ever since the commissioning of the oil exploration facilities belonging to Orient Petroleum Resources (OPR) at Aguleri-Otu, in Anambra East Local Government Area of Anambra State by former president Goodluck Jonathan where he declared Anambra as the 10th oil producing State, there have been constant claims and repeated agitations from the neighboring States of Kogi and Enugu that the oil deposits being explored by the company were domiciled in their territories, and not Anambra State.

Chief Jadams urged the President to use his capacity to do justice to the interminable wrangling which has become an albatross to social and economic development of the communities involved. He stressed that there is no gainsaying the fact that the said oil well is originally domiciled in Ibaji, Kogi State, and implored the President to put an end to the quandaries by pronouncing Kogi as an oil producing State to douse the tensions.

“It is an indisputable fact that the oil well is in Ibaji. Former President Jonathan’s pronouncement of Anambra as an oil producing State over an oil well located within boundaries of Kogi State is an error. The oil belongs to Kogi State. I beseech President Buhari to use his capacity as President to interpose and pull the plug of hostilities and violence between the contending communities,” he said.

•Photo shows Governor Idris Wada of Kogi State.

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