Soludo laments South East’s exclusion from region’s gas by FG

By Obinna Odogwu, Awka

Anambra State Governor, Prof. Chukwuma Soludo, has lamented the exclusion of the Southeast region from Nigeria’s gas master plan even when the gas sits under its own soil.

Soludo made the lamentation at the Nigerian Content Capacity Building Workshop for Media Stakeholders in the state, organised by the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB), at the Golden Tulip Hotel, Awka.

The governor, represented by his Commissioner for Information and Value Reformation, Dr. Law Mefor, also lamented that the state has benefited just little from Nigeria’s crude oil wealth despite being enlisted as an oil producing state.

“It is sad that Anambra is sitting on one of the biggest gas reserves in Nigeria, if not in Africa; and, yet, Nigeria’s gas master plan excluded Anambra State and the entire South East. I don’t know if the board is aware of this”, Soludo lamented.

“And Anambra, indeed, is an oil and gas state, though I cannot say that the state has benefited much from that endowment. It’s something that needs to be critically looked into”, he stated.

“The position of Anambra as an oil-producing state and allied issues are yet to be fully settled. It’s quite important that the local content development and monitoring board takes note of this and helps in whatever way you can to address this and put the issue to rest.”

The governor described the state as the goose that lays the golden egg which cannot benefit from the egg it lays.

“And we are expected as a state to drive development and industrialisation. That will remain far, I wouldn’t say an empty dream, but it’s going to be a tall order if we don’t have access to gas, direct access to gas, our own gas.

“We just have to access our gas, and we cannot access it without being part of the nation’s gas master plan”, the governor lamented further.

Earlier, the General Manager, Corporate Communication, NCDMB, Dr. Obinna Ezeobi, expressed the board’s desire to establish a stronger platform in the South East and collaborate beyond the workshop to improve the quality of media reportage on local content.

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