Communities in Bauchi and Gombe raise requests as Buhari begins oil drilling in the North

On Tuesday, November 22, as President Muhammadu Buhari oversees the first oil drill in Northern Nigeria, community leaders and citizens of the states of Bauchi and Gombe demanded employment prospects and a plan for a cleaner environment.

They urged the president and other stakeholders to make sure that their communities were not excluded from recruitment, decision-making, remuneration, and other possibilities, describing the development as a new dawn in their lives.

According to our reporters, preparations have advanced significantly along the Kolmani River, which runs between the states of Bauchi and Gombe, where President Buhari will preside over the momentous occasion.

Top executives from the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Ltd (NNPC) and the New Nigerian Development Company (NNDC) were seen mobilizing to the site in Gombe town to finalize preparations for the maiden oil drill.

The 19 northern states’ umbrella investment firm, NNDC, has oil prospecting licenses (OPL) 809 and 810 for the Kolmani field under a production-sharing agreement with NNPC Ltd. (PSC).

NNPC claimed the finding of oil in commercial quantities at the Kolmani River area in 2019, even though exploration had begun more than 30 years earlier but had been abandoned for several reasons.

By September 2021, it had started looking for a developer for the integrated oilfield, which involved upstream oil drilling as well as the operation of a 50,000 barrel per stream day (bpsd) refining facility and a 150 MW power plant in the midstream.

Several communities, including Garin Kafin Abbas in the Alkaleri Local Government Area of Bauchi State, where an earlier drill attempt was thwarted, were seen along the Gombe-Buckhi Expressway leading to the project site, while our reporters saw a large security presence.

It’s a reality or a fantasy…

Dr. Aliyu U. Tilde, the commissioner of education of Bauchi State, wrote an article welcoming Buhari to the oil drilling site and said that history had been created for the two sister states that had been “re-joined” by the president.

He dated the beginning of the Kolmani River’s role as the boundary between Bauchi and Gombe to the times of Yakubun Bauchi and Buba Yero, two of Usman Danfodio’s pupils.

He claims there were some disputes between the two about the location of their border, but in 1817, Sultan Muhammad Bello was in power and the Kolmani River was decided upon as their border.

Until Gombe became a state in 1996 under General Sani Abacha’s rule, Bauchi remained a province.

In the same Kolmani valley where their ancestors fought 207 years ago, President Buhari has reunited them with oil and gas.
I believe it is preferable for us to accept that the two will always be brothers since providence has so ordered,” he said.