Odahiekwu Ogunde, Yenagoa
The Ijaw Youth Council Worldwide, has warned the Minister of the Niger Delta, Godswill Akpabio, against focusing all his energies and time on the Niger Delta Development Commission alone to the detriment of developing the region.
The group reminded Akpabio, who incidentally is the supervising minister of the NDDC, to concentrate his attention on the dilapidated East-West Road, which they said had been in a terrible condition five years after his All Progressives Congress-led Federal Government took over.
The body flayed the revelation of heist and sleaze emanating from key actors that had had the privilege of managing the NDDC or are currently overseeing the activities of the commission.
Describing the development as pathetic, worrisome and unthinkable, the IYC called the attention of patriotic minds in the region to intervene.
In a statement on Thursday, Chairman, Transition Implementation Committee of the IYC, Kennedy Olorogun, and the Director of Information and Publicity, James Tobin, said the East-West road had continued to be a death trap despite the fact that the Federal Government recently approved the sum of N19.67bn for its completion.
The statement said that the Ijaw nation was more interested in the rapid development of the region and would not want to be drawn into the politics of whether a particular person heading the region’s intervention agency is from the Ijaw ethnic nationality or not.
The IYC backed President Muhammadu Buhari on directive to conduct forensic audit of the NDDC.
The group also applauded the President for finding sons and daughters of Ijaw nation worthy to be given national assignments with global significance.
It also said the Ijaw nation needed bridges, roads, hospitals, schools, health centres, recreation facilities, oil and gas allied industries, among others, in their communities and villages across the Niger Delta.
The IYC said, “The position of the IYC is eminently clear: one, the council has commended President Muhammadu Buhari for instituting the forensic audit probe panel to expose the many years of rot in the NDDC masterminded and precipitated by some persons from the region and their external collaborators.
“That the Interim Management Committee is alien to the NDDC Act. Therefore, it remains an aberration. Whether or not a member of our tribe or ethnic nationality is presiding over the affairs of the region’s intervention agency does not remove the fact that the IMC is clearly not in consonance with the NDDC Act and it is not what the region needs.
“The region needs a substantive NDDC board with the full powers to develop the region directly under the supervision of the President.”