Benin City – The recent blowing up of the Chevron Valve Platform in Delta State by the Niger Delta Avengers group has come up at a time when the recent wounds inflicted on Nigeria by Boko Haram and suspected Herdsmen are yet to heal, and therefore the Africa Network for Environment and Economic Justice ANEEJ, urges all militant groups, and especially the Niger Delta Avengers, to defuse their dynamites, sheathe their swords and let peace reign in Nigeria.
The Niger Delta Avengers have claimed that Niger Deltans are getting killed by security operatives escorting oil tankers from the South. ANEEJ condemns in unequivocal terms these killings being carried out in the Niger Delta and calls on the Federal government to address these sundry incidences before they escalate.
‘Our problems in the Niger Delta and indeed Nigeria cannot always be solved with a resort to arms and a resolve to cripple the Nigerian economy. If there are infractions being perpetrated by one section of the country on the other, we believe that the reasonable thing to do would be to interrogate the system via superior arguments and policy suggestions against such infractions rather than taking the laws in our hands’, ANEEJ executive director, the Rev David Ugolor, has said.
Nigerians are already in the throes of power outages, harsh economic conditions occasioned from the fall of oil prices worldwide, a weak naira and therefore blowing up pipelines which carry crude to the Warri and Kaduna refineries may not be the best option for us all at this time.
ANEEJ is concerned that with an Amnesty programme and Niger Delta Institutions in place to assuage frayed nerves over the injustices perpetrated on the Niger Delta by multinationals in collusion with government officials, together with the precarious condition of the Nigerian economy, what Nigeria needs is that all hands, heads and minds must be on deck to haul Nigeria from the precipice rather than a return to fisticuffs and the creeks to blow up pipelines.
We urge President Buhari to develop a comprehensive civic engagement with the Niger Delta people and also provide a transparent roadmap on how to deal with the environmental problems caused by several decades of oil exploitation by Multinational Oil Companies. The lacks of jobs among the youth in the region also require urgent attention through a creative policy that will provide opportunities for both public and private sectors to work together.
There should be rapid implementation of the 2016 Fiscal Budget to enable NDDC and the Ministry of Niger Delta to carry out quick development intervention that will address some of the problems: Poor road network, pollution of farm lands and unemployment among the Niger Delta Youths.
We strongly reject the option of using violence as a tool of attracting government attention which in the long run never help the very poor they claim to fight for rather it sustain systemic corruption and looting of public resources.
The Federal Government should step up their intelligence gathering capacity and use modern security strategy to deal with Niger Delta problem rather that resorting to nicked violence against the region that will only enrich individual security entrepreneurs.
The FG should scale up the Ogoni Clean Up programme to demonstrate genuine commitment to tackling the environmental problems in the region.
