‘Why Niger Delta woes persist’

The Pan Niger Delta Youth Leadership Forum (PANDLEAF) has blamed poor leadership for the under-development in the region.

A statement in Yenagoa by its President, Richard Akinaka, accused the leaders of using divide and rule tactics to impoverish the region.

He urged the youths to brace up to be part of the decision makers, and stop following leaders in the region blindly.

The statement followed a consultative meeting in Cross Rivers and Akwa Ibom states, where the youths were tasked to shun politics of bitterness.

The group urged the youths to foster unity to form a formidable front to confront their common enemies.

“We should stop this division among the regions, as no one is more Niger Delta than the other ethnic group,” he added.

Meanwhile, a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Yekini Nabena, has petitioned President Muhammadu Buhari over the tenure of the Board of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC). 

He urged the president to dissolve the board and redress the injustice and illegality in its composition.

In an open letter to the president dated February 26, 2018, he said the tenure of the board formally ended in December 2017.

Nabena said the tenures of the NDDC Managing Director, Nsima Udo Ekere, and the Chairman of the Board, Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba, had expired since last year. 

While Ndoma-Egba was appointed to serve out the tenure of fellow Cross River State indigene, Senator Bassey Ewa-Henshaw, Ekere was chosen to complete the tenure of fellow Akwa Ibom citizen, Mr. Bassey Dan-Abia, Nabena stated.
 
Ewa-Henshaw and Dan-Abia were inaugurated in 2013 for a four-year term that ought to have ended last December

The APC leader said Ndoma-Egba and Ekere’s continued stay in office was fraudulent and a demonstration of contempt for the law. 

He alleged that Bayelsa State, to which the board chairmanship post ought to have reverted, and other NDDC states, were being short-changed under the current situation.  

“The fact that the board members have been paying themselves all kinds of allowances, even after the expiration of their legal tenure, is criminal,” he said.