Ex-President Goodluck Jonathan’s kinsmen in the Ijaw Youth Council have accused President Muhammadu Buhari of making the Niger Delta people, particularly the Ijaws, targets of his anti-corruption war.
“Why is the government only after former President Goodluck Jonathan’s ex-aides? Jonathan deserves a Nobel peace prize, he deserves respect from Nigerians.
“As far as we are concerned, the anti-corruption fight is a fight against the Ijaw people,” the IYC president, Mr. Udengs Eradiri, said in an interview with our correspondent in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State capital.
Eradiri also cautioned the British government to stop harassing a former Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, who is currently undergoing fraud investigation in the UK, saying there were many northerners that had skeletons in their cupboards.
“Go to UK, almost all the streets are owned by northerners who stole Nigerian money,” he said.
But the Presidency, in a reaction by Buhari’s spokesman, Femi Adesina, on Sunday, said what the President had been engaged in was a national mandate and that he would not be distracted by those fanning the embers of ethnicity in the country.
Adesina advised members of the IYC and others who are still engrossed in propagating ethnic agenda to have a rethink and join the President in his national mandate of repositioning the country.
“The President is moving on with the national mandate he has been given.Those still marooned in ethnic cocoons should have a rethink and join the train,” he said.
The IYC boss also said the Federal Government should not stop the illegal bunkering activities in the Niger Delta except the government has alternatives for the illegal bunkerers.
Jonathan, who was defeated by Buhari in the March 28 poll, is an Ijaw from Bayelsa State in the oil rich Niger Delta region.
The Ijaw youths leader warned that the Niger Delta youths would soon recommence militancy in the region if the Federal Government failed to provide an alternative economic plan for people who involve in bunkering and refining activities in the region.
Eradiri said the provision of alternative means of livelihood for the people was the only remedy for “stopping them from accessing their only means of livelihood in the creeks.”
He said, “As the government is stopping them from their means of livelihood, the people must also be involved in the participation of their resources.
“When they are denied access to their own resources, it would give rise to another form of militancy in the region.”
Eradiri also described as sad the spate of oil theft in the Niger Delta, saying it was a crime against humanity because the livelihood of the people was being bastardised.
He said, “I have always said in the past that as much as we support the Federal Government’s war against oil theft, it must come with an economic plan as an alternative so that as you are going in to stop them from their way of life, you provide an alternative.
“There are many youths who engage in these activities (illegal bunkering and oil theft). You cannot stop them without providing something for them to do. They are many in the creeks. These same people are now coming to the society, that’s why you are seeing the increase in crimes.
“Robberies are going on, kidnapping is on the increase. They are kidnapping even ice fish sellers now, because when you destroy their means of livelihood and you don’t create any alternative, it is a deliberate ploy to destabilise the Niger Delta so that businesses would not come here.
“They say oil theft is an economic sabotage, what of the illegal mining that is going on in the north? Is that not the worst economic sabotage? At a point, there was lead poisoning as a result of illegal mining, and the money that they realised from illegal mining is huge; why do we not have the Joint Task Force policing illegal miners, knowing full well that the monies realised from gold illegally mined is far much more than money realised from stolen oil.”
The IYC president also called for proper investigation of how oil blocks were shared, adding that Buhari should visit and investigate owners of Nigerian oil blocks in the region if he is sincere with his anti-corruption campaign.
He also expressed worry that the Single Treasury Account system was already having a toll on the economy of the country and that both the Presidential Amnesty Programme and the Niger Delta Development Commission had been feeling the negative impact of the TSA.
The IYC boss, therefore, called on the President to exempt the NDDC and the Amnesty Office from the TSA in order for them to freely carry out their responsibilities of training young people from the Niger Delta and the development of the region as and when due.
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