Dr. Otuaro Volunteer Media Team Warns Gbaboyor to End Smear Campaign Against Tompolo Over Tinubu Re-Election Drive

Dr. Otuaro Volunteer Media Team Warns Gbaboyor to End Smear Campaign Against Tompolo Over Tinubu Re-Election Drive

The attention of the Dr. Dennis Otuaro Volunteer Media Team has been drawn to a publication by Engr.

Jude Gbaboyor titled "Like Bandit Campaigning for Political Leader - Gbaboyor Slams Tompolo's Tinubu Re-Election Drive." Having examined it carefully, the Dr. Otuaro Media Team rejects it as a politically motivated smear, and as a calculated attempt to portray High Chief Dr.

Government Oweizide Ekpemupolo (Tompolo) in a false light before Niger Deltans and Nigerians. The statements complained of are grave in character.

They are also wholly unsupported.

The impugned publication seeks to link Tompolo to Mr. Mele Kyari and, by that route, to alleged evasion of justice.

The Dr. Otuaro Media Team argued that this is reasoning by association, and that it fails on the facts.

Tantita Security Services Limited was awarded a pipeline surveillance contract by the Federal Government through the NNPCL Board. The contract was approved by the Federal Executive Council and is supervised by the Office of the National Security Adviser and the Nigerian Navy.

The Dr. Otuaro Media Team further states that the National Assembly Committee on Petroleum reviewed the contract and expressed confidence in its results.

A contract awarded and supervised through these institutions is not a private arrangement with any individual, and to suggest otherwise is to mislead the public.

The said publication also repeats allegations of kidnapping, rituals and the operation of a private prison. These are serious criminal accusations, and the law has designated forums for them: the police, the security services and the courts.

The Dr. Otuaro Media Team observes that the author has repeated these claims over the years without citing a single charge, judgment or conviction against Tompolo.

A person who genuinely holds evidence of such offences does not unveil it in a blog post. He submits it to the authorities.

The Dr. Otuaro Media Team is further informed that Tantita does not operate any private prison, and that suspects arrested in the course of its work are handed over to the Navy and the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps.

Accusations of this gravity, advanced without proof, do not amount to commentary. They amount to character assassination.

The author's suggestion that Tompolo's campaign for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is a quest for protection is equally without merit. The Dr.

Otuaro Media Team argued that Tompolo is a respected Ijaw leader and a former agitator who accepted the Presidential Amnesty in 2009 in the interest of national peace. His support for President Tinubu rests on policy: electricity decentralisation, local government autonomy, new geopolitical development commissions, increased funding for the NDDC (which the Dr.

Otuaro Media Team states rose from ₦485 billion to ₦1.9 trillion), higher allocations to the states and the dredging of Niger Delta ports. To support a candidate on that record is a political choice protected by the constitutional guarantee of freedom of expression, and no citizen owes the public an apology for exercising it.

The most offensive passage is the comparison of Tompolo to a Boko Haram terrorist, and the Dr. Otuaro Media Team challenged it on its own terms.

Tompolo was granted amnesty by the late President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua and contributed to the restoration of the peace that allows Nigeria to produce oil today. Boko Haram is a terrorist organisation responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Nigerians.

To place the two side by side is reckless. Because the target is an Ijaw leader, it also carries an ethnic undertone capable of inflaming passions in a region whose stability depends on restraint.

The Dr. Otuaro Media Team calls on the relevant authorities to consider whether language of this kind is consistent with the laws against incitement.

On funding and oil theft, the author asserts that 80 per cent of pipeline surveillance funds go to politicians and that deep-sea bunkering continues unchecked. He supplies no document, figure or witness for either claim.

The Dr. Otuaro Media Team states that Tompolo's door-to-door campaign is funded by Niger Delta youths and stakeholders who believe in the continuity of the Tinubu administration.

It states, further, that the Tantita contract is performance-based and audited quarterly, and that NNPCL has confirmed savings of over $10 billion that would otherwise have been lost to crude theft. A simple question of logic remains: if oil theft were still operating on an industrial scale, why has national production risen?

The impugned statements offer no answer, and the figures do not support them.

The Dr. Otuaro Media Team makes no accusation against the author's motives.

It observes only that an unproven attack, published in the midst of a political campaign, invites the public to ask whom it serves. In its view, it serves no public interest.

It presents opinion as fact and relies on repetition in place of evidence.

The position of the Dr. Otuaro Media Team is therefore clear.

Tompolo is not a bandit. He is the Chairman of Tantita, which the Dr.

Otuaro Media Team states employs 35,000 Niger Delta youths and has contributed to the restoration of Nigeria's oil economy. His endorsement of President Tinubu does not diminish the President.

In the view of the Dr. Otuaro Media Team, it strengthens him in a region where Tompolo commands a wide grassroots following.

False and damaging statements of the kind complained of may amount to defamation under the applicable laws, and the author would be well advised to weigh that before repeating them.

The Dr. Otuaro Media Team accordingly calls on the author to desist from further baseless attacks on Tompolo.

It urges the media to test claims against the verifiable record before amplifying them, and it calls on the general public to disregard the said publication as unproven. It urges the relevant authorities to examine its potential to stir ethnic tension in the Niger Delta, and it calls on President Tinubu to continue working with Niger Delta leaders who, in its view, have delivered results.

The Niger Delta cannot be intimidated, and the door-to-door campaign for the President's re-election will continue.