Sangana Killings: Bayelsa Youths Threaten To Shut Down Conoil

Members of the Bayelsa Youths Association have asked the federal and state governments to investigate the alleged killing of four protesters by security operatives attached to Conoil offshore facility in Sangana Kingdom of Brass local government area of the state.

Some aggrieved indigenes of Sangana had staged a peaceful protest against Conoil, a multinational oil company operating in their community over its alleged inability to perform its corporate social responsibility and also accused the firm of complicity in the military’s killing of youths in the area.

While condemning the incident, the group said it had given Conoil seven days ultimatum to produce the security personnel involved in the killing for justice or face total shutdown of its operations in the state.

In a statement issued in Yenagoa by the president, Doupere Olakemi Precious, the association bemoaned the mindless killing of the unarmed youths who went to the Conoil facility to request for the implementation of the Global Memorandum of Understanding (GMOU) by the military attached to the facility.

He said, “We are saddened and outraged by the news of the mindless killing of the peaceful youths of Sangana Community by trigger-happy security operatives in Sangana territory.

“It is beyond our imagination to think that energetic and promising youths have been denied their right to life by the security operatives of the oil company that is exploiting oil in their territory and has disrupted their local fishing economy in the process, simply because they dared to task Conoil to live up to its responsibilities in the GMOU it entered into with the community.

“We want to state unequivocally that the oil facility that the security operatives killed the youths over is not worth the life of any human being.”