President of IYC worldwide, Pereotubo Oweilaemi, in a statement made available to the Nigerian Tribune, described the unfortunate situation as dehumanising and excruciating.
He wondered why, in spite of the several channels of communication that had been opened by the affected scholars to NDDC board, nothing tangible had come out of the retinue of petitions.
“The attention of the Ijaw Youth Council (IYC), Worldwide has been drawn to the news currently trending that the beneficiaries of the NDDC Oversea post-graduate scholarships have been subjected to miseries and squalors due to non-payment of their tuition fees and other incentives.
“IYC has taken the pain to have an interface with some of the affected students. We regret to say that the beneficiaries are being subjected to inhuman conditions as some of them are being squatted in the Nigerian embassies, while some are on the verge of being repatriated to the country.
“We also discovered that the affected students have opened different channels of communication with the management of NDDC here in Nigeria but to our chagrin, the Commission is paying deaf ears to the plea.
“Even after promising to attend to the plights of the students in foreign lands on the pages of newspapers, no step has ever been taken by the Commission to ameliorate their sufferings,” the group alleged.
IYC, decrying the situation further, observed that “on the list of 2016 beneficiaries, only those who were able to raise funds to pay their tuition fees and travel expenses were able to commence studies in their chosen countries, however the Commission has not refunded their expenses to them.
“Many indigent Ijaw youths who got the scholarship in 2016 and were unable to pay their fees themselves are still in Nigeria and unable to process their travel documents.
“We wish to alert the world, especially concerned Nigerians that another ugly news of Nigerians being subjected to slavery and servitudes are on the offing if the NDDC keeps on shirking its responsibility in attending to the plights of its students in foreign scholarship programmes.
“As part of its statutory responsibilities to the Niger Delta region, we beg the NDDC Board not to keep aloof to the debilitating conditions of the students.
“Let the Commission respond to its duty with immediate effect for the safety and the survival of the students in its oversea scholarship programmes. IYC also call on President Mohammadu Buhari and the National Assembly to prevail on the current Board to do the needful before its tenure expires.
“The students are currently in excruciating conditions in foreign countries.”
The Ijaw youth group, therefore, called on President Muhammadu Buhari to prevail on the NDDC Board to nip in the bud a growing form of slavery Nigerians scholars are being subjected to abroad in the guise of scholarship.
…Sues for release of Niger Delta agitators in detention
The umbrella body of Ijaw youths, the Ijaw Youth Council Worldwide, has petitioned the United Nations Human Rights Commission over the alleged continued detention of 50 Niger Delta agitators in security operatives’ custody.
Other agencies petitioned are the Africa Commission on Human and Peoples’ Right and the National Human Rights Commission of Nigeria.
The IYC, in the petition dated December 10, 2017, and signed by its President, Mr. Eric Omare, to mark the 2017 World Human Rights Day, said the detainees had been in custody for more than a year in relation to Niger Delta agitations without trial.
The body, therefore, entreated the commissions to facilitate their release from detention facilities in the country, particularly in the Department of State Services.
The IYC disclosed in the letter that Mr. Daniel Ezekiel, one of the detainees recently released from DSS custody, revealed that there were 50 Niger Delta agitators in DSS detention centres until his release after a year and three months in detention without trial.
The group further said, “Some of the Niger Delta persons in detention are Alex Odogu (IYC Spokesman, Abuja Chapter); Michael John; Gabriel Ogbu; Justus Golubus; Joshua Golubus; Norway Suku; Felix Mieminiye; and John Fortune, among others.
“We state that the continued detention of these Niger Deltans without trial amounts to a violation of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the African Charter on Human and Peoples
Rights and Chapter IV of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria on Fundamental Human Rights. “These international instruments and local laws guarantee citizens’ rights to personal liberty and obligate security agencies to charge anybody that is arrested in suspicion of having committed an offence within 24 hours or a reasonable time.
“The IYC states that most of the Niger Delta people in detention have spent more than a year in detention without trial. In some of the cases, the courts in Nigeria have made an order for their release but the relevant security agencies refused to obey the order and release them on bail.”
The IYC called on the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights; the Commissioner of the Africa Commission on Human and Peoples Rights; and the Executive Secretary, NHRCN, to prevail on the relevant security agencies, especially the DSS, to release them from detention as a matter of urgency.
and then