A community leader in Bonny Local Government Area, Richard Abbey has raised alarm that oil and gas multinationals were colluding with nomadic fishermen to steal land on the fringes of the community and creating crisis in the area.

Abbey, who is the Coordinator of the Free-to-Operate (FTO) Committee set up by the Amanyanabo of Bonny Kingdom, King Edward William Dappa Pepple III, Perekule XI, said this today in a telephone interview with Kristina Reports.

“The oil companies want to join heads of people. We have been in a mess for days now because most of our territories are being taken away from us. Look at Opobo Channel, it is being taken away from us because the oil companies go to the fishermen and make them landlords.

“We are losing Cawthorne Channel 2 to the Kalabaris because the oil companies go directly to the fishing settlements and make them landlords without coming to the kingdom”.

The FTO Committee was set up to interface with companies coming to do business in Bonny LGA to provide a seamless interaction with the community in the course of doing business there.

He said communities on the western and eastern flanks of Bonny LGA were being dispossessed by oil companies who compromised fishermen and strangers living on the fringes of the LGA to claim ownership of the land.

He further disclosed that these developments have robbed Bonny community of benefits accruing to her, stating that the land on boundaries between Bonny and Degema LGA, on the Western flank including the Cawthorne Channel 2, and that on the Eastern flank including the Opobo Channel rightly belongs to the Bonny people.

“Judgement and everything, we have all the documents to prove that we own that place. The oil companies will just go there and do their work and get away and cause problems for us. And the benefits that is supposed to accrue to the kingdom, we lose them”.

He warned that this development was a recipe for crisis in the area if nothing was done urgently to curb the menace.

Speaking further, Abbey regretted that community members in those areas were also complicating the situation and deepening the crisis by colluding with the oil companies to deprive the Bonny community of what rightly belongs to her.

“Sometimes, the kingdom is not aware because the host community will defend them and guard them and commit themselves wrongly. By the time you want to take the company to court, the company will say I have settled Mr. A”.