The Presidential Adviser on Niger Delta Affairs and Chairman of the Presidential Amnesty Committee, Mr Kingsley Kuku, has challenged governors and chairmen of states and local government councils on the Niger Delta on the development of the region.
Kuku said elected officials in the region are not helping to improving the lots of their people despite the increase in their monthly allocations.
Kuku said that as a result of the amnesty programme, oil production has improved, rising from about 700,000 to about 2.7million barrels per day which in turn has increased the allocations of the governments of the Niger Delta by about seven billion naira monthly.
Despite this huge earnings accruing to them, Kuku lamented that they are not empowering their people.
The Presidential Adviser on Niger Delta Affairs and Chairman of the Presidential Amnesty Committee, Mr Kingsley Kuku, has challenged governors and chairmen of states and local government councils on the Niger Delta on the development of the region.
Kuku said elected officials in the region are not helping to improving the lots of their people despite the increase in their monthly allocations.
Kuku said that as a result of the amnesty programme, oil production has improved, rising from about 700,000 to about 2.7million barrels per day which in turn has increased the allocations of the governments of the Niger Delta by about seven billion naira monthly.
Despite this huge earnings accruing to them, Kuku lamented that they are not empowering their people.
The Presidential Adviser who spoke in Port Harcourt when he had a meeting with Ogoni Youth Council (OYC) said that it is regrettable that instead of executing projects for the people, the politicians are busy jostling for second term in office “and because of that they do not tell the governors the truth for fear of losing their bids to come back to office.”
He also said that “this is the only time the governors can empower their people because beyond amnesty programme, what happens? Or must we gazette every Niger Delta youth as ex-militants?”
Kuku wondered why the four council chairmen in Ogoni land are not training their youths on environmental remediation so that they could key into the cleanup of the area as contained in the United Nations on Environment Programme (UNEP) report.
The presidential amnesty committee chairman who said that the meeting with the Ogoni youths was the first of the series of meetings he would hold with people of all ethnic nationalities in Niger Delta also urged the people to wake up and begin to talk to the governors and local government chairmen in the region “because we are getting more money and so let us use it to help our people.”
Earlier, OYC in communiqué signed by Comrade Marvin Yorbana, President and four others, dissociated themselves from “any call for secession” and condemned in strong terms the delayed implementation of the UNEP report on Ogoni.
They also demanded to be included in the amnesty programme as well as “an immediate training programme for the development of skills in oil spill cleanup and response techniques preparatory to the remediation exercise of devastated lands of Ogoni.”
No comments:
Post a Comment