On Thursday, Ijaw Youths from the six states of the Niger Delta region declared that President Muhammadu Buhari and Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Chief Timipre Sylva, are no longer welcome in the province because of their roles in the passage and signing of the Petroleum Industrial Bill (PIB) into law.
Even though President Buhari and Chief Sylva have constitutional rights to relocate to any area of Nigeria, the youths claim that their entry into the six Niger Delta states will be met with boos and disgusting jeers due to their disrespect for the region’s plight and cries throughout the years.
The Ijaw Youths Council (IYC) Worldwide group had previously on Tuesday protested President Muhammadu Buhari’s signing of the contentious Petroleum Industrial Bill (PIB).
They said that the enactment of the PIB is a complete disrespect to the people of the Niger Delta region’s outrage over the three percent allocation for oil-producing areas.
President Muhammadu Buhari and Chief Timipre Sylva will not be welcomed to the region, according to the IYC’s national spokesman, Comrade Ebilade Ekerefe, in a statement released to Daily Post in Yenagoa.
Ekerefe said that the best decision the President would have made was to put the bill back before the National Assembly for a revision to increase equity share payments to host communities whose habitats had been damaged by oil exploration for decades.
To combat this long-standing illegality, a large portion of the proceeds should have been given to the host community. “Until that is done, there’s nothing to celebrate,” he said.
About Timipre Sylva’s explanation of the 3 percent he described it as an afterthought, according to Ekerefe To him, the Minister should have apologized and appealed to our people’s consciences, rather than explaining a policy that is politically engineered to favor the north and its partners in the sector, said Mr. MacDonald.
For the National Assembly to pass a 3 percent equity share to host towns while passing 30 percent to frontier basins, according to Ekerefe, is a violation of justice and equity.
“With the amount of speed the president used in signing the PIB without recourse to the stem stand by stakeholders from the region, the president has further demonstrated that the opinions of the Niger delta people don’t matter in his government as we’ve witnessed in other areas that require urgent attention of his government,” he said.
“In the light of the foregoing, there’s no better time for the people of the Niger Delta region to intensify the struggle for resource control and self-determination, “We believe strongly that that will be the only sure path upon which our God giving natural resources can be managed by us and not this impunity we’ve witnessed from a repressive federal government under President Muhammadu Buhari”.
