A group, United Niger Delta Energy Development Security Strategy (UNDEDSS), has charged President Muhammadu to stop his administration’s current unjust practices in the region and ensure it lives up to its responsibilities in the area.
The group, while welcoming the Prof. Ibrahim Gambari on board as the Chief of Staff (CoS) to President Buhari and anticipating a better working relationship between the Presidency and the region, declared that it was resolved to get the Federal Government to honour its own end of the ceasefire bargain it entered with it before end 2020.
“As we welcome the erudite Professor Ibrahim Gambari on board the Presidential Team, we anticipate a better working relationship between the Presidency and the region such as delivered the unilateral ceasefire which the Nigerian economy has been benefiting from since 2016, even without agreed reciprocating action on the part of Government,” the group said.
UNDEDSS gave this charge in a communiqué issued following the conclusion of its at the eve first Virtual Quarterly Meeting and signed by its Secretary-General, Mr Tony I Uranta.
In the communiqué, made available to newsmen in Lagos on Thursday, the group declared that the Buhari administration was yet to show sincerity in the remediation of the region, starting with the clean-up of Ogoni land.
Other concerns raised by UNDEDSS include the need for more robust funding for the Maritime University in Gbaramatu; the full installation and commissioning of the currently abandoned mega-Dry Dock, which is considered the biggest in Africa, the completion of the sanitizing and full funding of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) and the demilitarization of the Niger Delta, amongst others.
According to it, the Buhari- led Federal Government “has not exhibited equity and fairness by not giving Covid19 Stimulus Funds to states of the Niger Delta commensurate to the region being the source of the majority of funds in the national treasury,” even as the group implored Buhari not be swayed in the resolve to cleanse the Augean stable of corruption in the NDDC as it was currently doing via the Interim Management Committee (IMC).
“We applaud Mr President for not allowing the self-aggrandisement driven campaign against the ongoing NDDC audit sway his resolve that the Interim Management Committee IMC cleans out the years of corruption in that prime federal interventionist agency in the region,” UNDEDSS affirmed.
“We must end the many years of raping the Niger Delta with impunity. We know that even the Senate putative scheming against the Committee is not altruistic, but is rather born out of the losing of humongous rent collections by certain premier officers of the National Assembly. The National Assembly must stop blackmailing the IMC! A word sufficeth the wise,” it added.
Speaking further, the group said it was also resolved to turn its x-ray on corrupt governance in the region’s state governments this year, saying that corruption would not end until Nigeria learned systemically to embrace Independent Monitoring and Evaluation.
It, however, commended the anti-Covid-19 initiatives of the Federal Government, Lagos and Rivers states as well as the efforts by the Dangote-led Corporate bodies “whilst, specially saluting doctors, nurses and all health workers for their selfless inimitable services, without which Nigeria would have long collapsed.”
NIGERIAN TRIBUNE