By Amgbare Ekaunkumo, Yenagoa
The agitation for the emancipation of the people of Niger Delta seems not to have ended as the National President of the Movement for the Survival of the Izon Ethnic Nationality in the Niger Delta,MOSIEND, Dr. Kennedy West, has called on the Tinubu led government to approve OML for the people of the region.
Speaking on Thursday during the 56th Boro day celebration, Dr. West,
explained that there are obvious issues that points to the facts
that the federal government has been unfair to the people of the Niger Delta region.
According to him the NDDC, Amnesty programe, surveillance contract which the government have been boasting of as a gift to the people of the region is a blatant lie but rather he said what the people need is OML approval.
He said “Like the NDDC which will turn 25 yrs next year, and for the past 24 yrs the federal government hasn’t contributed her own equity contribution into the system, which is an example of cooperate marginalization.
On the issue of the amnesty programme, he averred that the amnesty programme is not the answer to the problem of the Niger Delta people and region, adding
that the federal government has not done anything tangible for the people and the region ,that Amnesty isn’t an achievement.
West, further explained that the amnesty was just a programme that the agitators from the region agreed upon as a way to calm their nerves and reasonably dropped their arms and ammunition.
He said “They were not coarse on their volution to drop their arms, but they did it on the premise that the federal government will turn the Niger Delta to a construction site in order to address most of the issues, unfortunately the federal government also count the amnesty programme as an achievement in the Niger Delta. That is a blatant lie, and a way to patronize us, we will not accept it”
Amnesty is not an achievement, you haven’t done nothing for the Niger Delta people. Amnesty was not the only recommendation by the committee, there were about ten. President Tinubu should go dust the recommendations up, so as to address the burning issues that affects the region headlong.
Pipeline surveillance is not a gift for the Niger Delta region, this is not what we want, we want approvals of OML given to the people of the region,
While given reasons for the need of OML, the MOSIEND Boss said ” If we have more people from the region operating the OML, there will be a limit to issues of gas flaring, environmental degradation, and other challenges faced by the region.”
It is a sad development, that most of the things our Hero Isaac Adaka Boro asked for are still hunting the nation today. Boro asked for a republic, and asking for a republic isn’t in the ambit of what the federal government can do.
He was criticized, denigrated, vilified, and killed by the Nigerian government, but the truth he spoke after 56 yrs is still hunting Nigeria.
What were the issues? That there should be fiscal federalism, to allow the various regions and ethnic nationality that produces the economy mainstay have a stake and say in it. Let them control the proceeds that comes out of it.
The Nigerian government saw him as a threat, failing to understand that the composition that brought about the Nigerian state itself is faulty, but everybody turned a blind eye to it.
56 years after, all the various group like IPOB, ODUDUWA and others are agitating now because the government never saw the reality of what Isaac Boro was fighting for.
When you are not comfortable in a country where it has to be with equity sharing, a country where successive government has abuse the rule of law. In a country where government deliberately ensure that the federal character principles used for equity and fair sharing is flagrantly abused, then you agitate some other ethnic nationality think you are asking for too much.
We are saying Restructuring, constitution amendment must be done, let the President invoke a referendum, collapse the constitution and let the people sit down again and write a constitution that is agreeable and acceptable, addressing the interest of every other regions that are agitated, that is where we can talk about a true Nigeria.
We are right now entangled in an estate we are all not comfortable about, and trying to swallow the bitter pills as if all is well.
The various regions are not comfortable with the way the country is going, which shows Nigeria is sitting on a keg of gun powder, and if the issues are not addressed timely and nip in the bud, it will come like a disastrous tsunami.
The Ijaws are very aggrieved, the Nigerian government is taking our liberality and benevolence for granted. Everything that comes out from this country as a superior economy mainstay is gotten from the Niger Delta region yet we get peanuts from it, while we continue to enjoy what is bitter to us.
There’s a limit you can endure as man, let this 56th Boro day anniversary be seen as a signal that all seems to be well but not well, there’s an extent to which an Ijaw man can endure but we can no longer do that.
While commending the President for the current leadership of the board, we also urge that they should put money in the system.
