Tompolo Foundation: From Militancy to Charity

According to the adjutant Professor of Conflict and Peace Studies, Centre for Population and Development, Benin City, “The big agency development has been a jamboree of political contractors and has been a museum for elephant, whitewashed, uncompleted, abandoned and high cost projects that have had little bearing on the peoples’ livelihoods”.

Even with the Federal Government under the leadership of a Niger-Deltan, he observed, “The situation of scant developmental attention has not considerably changed. Federal Government efforts remain trickle, poorly funded, centralized and poorly performing interventions”.

Ikelegbe said there was need for massive educational and health care interventions to strengthen human capital in the region, particularly in the terribly under-developed riverine and coastal communities, adding that this would not be government alone, but from eminent Niger-Deltans.

“The results from the transnational oil companies and international organizations thus far, have not made much difference to the overall picture of inadequacy, lack of access and poor quality of social services and infrastructure to the generality of the region’s population.,” he added.

Ikelegbe, who spoke at the launching of the Tompolo Foundation, a non-governmental organization, NGO, set up by ex-militant leader and founder of the defunct Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger-Delta, MEND, High Chief Government Ekpemupolo, alias Tompolo, to provide access to education and healthcare to the less privileged, said the freedom fighter has blazed the trail.

Source: OgoniNews