Avwomakpa  Writes Open Letter To Gov Oborevwori On The Establishment Of OPA

By Pastor T. Avwomakpa

This is to kindly call on Your Excellency, the Rt. Hon. Sheriff Oborevwori to establish a body which may be known as the Delta State Opportunities Protection Agency (OPA). I believe Your Excellency is mindful of my contributions and support to your election bid from the party primaries to the general elections where Your Excellency secured the overwhelming vote of Deltans across the state. The suggestions herein are therefore aimed at giving further support to Your Excellency and advancing the MORE Agenda of this administration in order to achieve maximum results and to endear Your Excellency to all Deltans with remarkable output, demonstrating capacity towards your successful reelection in 2027.

The call for establishment of the State Opportunities Protection Agency became imperative following the discovery in the recent 86 Regular Recruits exercise of the Nigerian Army where about six indigenes of Kaduna State were caught attempting to be recruited into the Nigerian Army through slots meant for indigenes of Lagos State. These slot thieves confessed that they were facilitated by their relatives who are serving senior military officers. This case is just one of many such instances where our people are denied recruitment into Army, Navy, Air Force, Police, and other federal agencies which provide a number of slots for each state of the federation in order to ensure equitable representation of each state of the federation in federal institutions.

The requirement for certificate of local government of origin is birthed by the provision for indigenship/citizenship under Chapter 3 of the Nigerian Construction. Besides the regular recruitment exercises, there are employment/ appointive  opportunities, foreign and domestic scholarship opportunities, empowerment opportunities accruing from the Federal Government and it’s agencies to States, recruitments opportunities from oil and gas companies, compliance of oil and gas companies with the Local (Nigerian) Content Act, benefits to host communities under the Petroleum Industry Act, where  slots meant for Delta State are diverted unnoticed while our people cry of lack of opportunities.

These benefits are lost because there is no specific body within the state government saddled with the responsibility to address the problem. This informs the call for the establishment of the agency to search for, protect, and secure opportunities meant for indigenes of Delta State. The office of the Commissioner of Information, the existing bureaus, and the state lieson office are not best suited for this assignment sir. The duties of the proposed agency may include the following;

1) To sensitise indigenes of Delta State on availability of federal opportunities.

2) To educate Deltans on how to explore and take advantage of available federal opportunities.

3) To facilitate the recruitment processes of indigenes of Delta state through lieson with appropriate agencies on the one hand and reaching all applicants of Delta State origin through dedicated help lines.

4) To search for opportunities available to Deltans under the Federal government and its parastatals or agencies.

5) To liaise with local governments, kingdoms, clans, communities, socio-cultural and religious institutions to explore existing opportunities of the federal government.

6) To monitor the recruitment, admission, and screening processes of the federal government, its agencies, institutions and parastatals to ensure that Delta State slots are not hijacked by none Deltans who have the influence or financial heavyweight of purchasing the certificate of local government of origin from any local government in Delta state and; 7) To ensure that applicants for job opportunities provided by the Delta State government are true indigenes of Delta State. This will checkmate the saga which occured few years ago when Delta State government advertised for recruitment into the civil service and a huge number of the applicant for the recruitment turned out to be indigenes of Anambra, Edo, and other neighbouring states, thereby denying qualified Deltans the  opportunities. It is also important to state that oftentimes, some of these none indigenes buy the employment slots from politicians and civil servants who have influences over different stages of the recruitment processes.

It is critical to bring these abnormalities to Your Excellency’s attention in order to end the corrupt practice. I know that as a man of action, Your Excellency will not sleep over these abnormalities which if not checked, are capable of frustrating the human capital development initiative under the MORE Agenda. The upcoming massive infrastructure development by Julius Berger across the state, coupled with realistic human capital development structures will facilitate the realization of the MORE Agenda of Your Excellency.

The ‘Ukodo’ must go round as Your Excellency promised during the campaigns. I know that with your wealth of experience in governance, Your Excellency will consider this proposal and give life to it in a more appropriate context in the overall interest of the welfare of the good people of Delta State.

Thanks Your Excellency.

Yours faithfully,

Pastor T. Avwomakpa Esq PhD