IYC urges PMB to relocate PAP, Niger Delta ministry to region

The Ijaw Youth Council (IYC) worldwide has again urged President Muhammadu Buhari to relocate the offices of the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs and the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP) to the region.

It also restated its call to make the Acting Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Professor Nelson Brambaifa, the substantive Managing Director of the commission.

The IYC President, Pereotubo Oweilaemi, made the appeal during this year’s celebration of Isaac Boro Day in Kaiama, Bayelsa State, attributing the demand to Brambaifa’s performance.

The Ijaw Youth Leader used the occasion, which marked the 21st anniversary of the historic Kaiama Declaration to restate the Ijaw nation’s position on re-structuring, true federalism and resource control.

He said: “51 years after Isaac Boro laid down his life for the unity of this country, the issues that caused its near collapse have not been addressed, thereby threatening the country’s continuous corporate existence.

“Successive governments for the past 51 years have refused to heed the popular demands of restructuring, true federalism and resource control, which are the panacea to addressing the wounds of the civil war.

“For us in the Niger Delta, our grievances can only be addressed only if the country is restructured. We will never back down on our collective struggle for the liberation of the region until we attain our political independent.”

Besides, Coordinator of the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP), Professor Charles Dokubo, said that the Federal Government views the Amnesty Programme as a necessary tool to transform the Niger Delta region.

This, he noted, informed President Muhammadu Buhari’s commitment to actualizing the objectives of the programme.

Dokubo stated this in Abuja during the celebration of the Boro Day.

Meanwhile, the Policy Alert and Publish What You Pay (PWYP) Nigeria has launched #WetinWeGain campaign to enhance adequate disclosures of oil, gas and mining transactions in the country.

The campaign would also empower the people of host communities with adequate and accurate information to ask the right questions so as to fully benefit from their natural resources.

Lamenting the poor management, operational capacity and corruption in Nigeria’s oil, gas and mineral subsector the group maintained that the country has witnessed a massive hemorrhage of assets and revenues over the last six decades.

Its Executive Director, Tijah Bolton-Akpan, in a statement yesterday in Abuja said rather than the country’s natural resources contributing to prosperity for Nigerians, the nation had witnessed a downward slide in all development indicators.

Citing a 2018 data World Poverty Clock, he lamented that the latest disturbing revelation was that Nigeria now leads countries with the highest poverty burden, with an estimated 87 million Nigerians living in extreme poverty.