Insecurity: Total Move Expatriate Staff Out Of Abuja

Posted by: usman on January 26, 2013 in Nigerian News Leave a comment

A TOTAL NIGERIA OIL PLATFORM

Oil major, Total Nigeria Plc, has moved its expatriate staff from the Nation’s capital Abuja, following the abduction of a French national last month, Chief Executive Christophe de Margerie said on Friday.The news will come as a major blow to the FG’s efforts at reassuring the international community that the country is safe for business. The latest development makes it the first time in recent history that a major company has said it has evacuated its foreign staff from the federal capital due to security concerns.
“What we do first is to limit the number of expatriates, not because they have more rights to be protected than the others, but because they are a more interesting target, if I may say,” de Margerie told France 24 television.
He, however did not elaborate on the number of staff moved.
“In Nigeria, we have three installations … We moved our people from Abuja, which is the city that is most at risk, to Lagos and Port-Harcourt, and if necessary, we move them back to Paris,” he told the TV channel on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos.