By Chief Olori Magege
Warri is a mega city. It is the economic capital of Delta State. At its peak of glory, it was home to all the giants in the oil industry, giants like Shell and Chevron. So also were NNPC and its subsidiaries. Everything you needed was in Warri; its nightclubs with their glittering neon lights, shopping centres, casinos, hotels, open markets, motor parks etc. Name it, Warri had it.
Suddenly Warri died literally, military and other security agencies took over the desolate streets as tribal militia waged bloody wars against one another. No one knows how many lives were lost but the estimate was in scores of thousands. By the time the guns were silenced, all the oil companies had gone along with their service companies. To add to the woes the once vibrant Warri port became dead. Jobs were lost in hundreds of thousands and the economy became comatose, Warri became a desolate place where crime became the order of the day.
Chief James Ibori, then governor, restored some order but the damage was too severe to make any impact. Criminals took over Warri making a feast of what was left of the economy of the city.
Subsequent administrations tried to restore the economy of Warri with limited success.
Then the NNPC refinery collapsed sealing the gloomy fate of the city. Warri once a booming cosmopolitan became a shadow of its good old days.
Sheriff Oborevwori became governor of the state and from day one he made it a priority to bring back the good old days of Warri. Sheriff is a Wafi boy, (as Warri is fondly referred to). The governor grew up on the streets of Warri. There is nothing he does not know, first-hand, about Warri.
Governor Sheriff went to work determined to change the narratives. He continued the Storm Drainage, built and building new roads and reconstructing old ones. The Warri Stadium is being rebuilt to international standard and the surrounding roads are redesigned to give the stadium a new look.
Governor Oborevwori was not done yet. He brought in the giant Julius Berger to build flyovers in major intersections to end the protracted traffic jams in the city. Sheriff has turned Warri-Uvwie mega city into one giant construction site. Construction is going on at a scale never witnessed in Warri in recent times.
And with improved security nite life is gradually and steadily coming back to the city. Sheriff’s government is spending big money revamping Warri-Uvwie mega city.
Just last week, came the icing on the cake; the NNPC refinery came back to life after a decade in hiatus. Nothing could be sweeter.
Amid this euphoria of a good time coming back again, I came across an article by a journalist writing under the pen name WONG BOX. Here is the article in reference.
His data and statistics on the staff ethnic spread of NNPC Warri may or may not be correct. I have no issue with that. But I am worried about his conclusions and threats. The Federal Character Commission nicknamed Quota Commission is a statutory regulatory body set up to address the inadequacies in employment in Federal institutions across the country. Mr Wong Box ought to address such inadequacies to the Commission through Delta member of the Commission.
He chose the path of issuing threats to NNPC Warri. He demanded a monthly payment of N200,000.00 naira to every unemployed graduate and N100,000.00 to every unemployed school certificate holder in the state. Failing the youth presumably his group will start a kidnapping spree of NNPC expatriates and staff and bombing of oil facilities in the state. This is crass banditry.
This Wong Box write-up must be condemned in its entirety. How can a journalist be promoting criminality and anarchy as a solution to a problem easily solved through existing statutory channels; channels which ironically, Wong Box has not even exploited?
Is Wong Box write-up, not a weapon by enemies of Delta State to de-market the state to investors, local and foreign, at a time when all hands must be on deck with government to revamp Warri-Uvwie metropolis and bring it back to its place of glory?
There is no place for criminality in Delta state, certainly not in Warri Uvwie mega-city, and for anyone to so suggest is irresponsibility carried too far.
. Chief Magege writes from Orho Agbarho, Delta State.
