Anger over the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) in the Niger Delta deepened yesterday with Ijaw youths from the six states of the region declaring that President Muhammadu Buhari and the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Chief Timipre Sylva, are no longer welcomed in the region over their roles in the making of the new petroleum law.
The Ijaw youths, under the aegis of Ijaw Youth Council (IYC) worldwide, had on Tuesday rejected the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) that was enacted on Monday, saying it is an affront to the people of the region who had risen against the three per cent provision for the oil producing communities.
IYC spokesman, Mr. Ebilade Ekerefe, in a statement issued in Yenagoa, said the decision not to welcome Buhari and Sylva to the region was a further show of their rejection of the law.
Ekerefe insisted that Buhari should have sent the bill back to the National Assembly for upward review of the three per cent equity share to host communities whose environments had suffered decades of degradation through oil exploration activities.
He said a substantial percentage to the host communities would have helped to address this age long cruelty to Niger Delta.
“Until that is done, there is nothing to celebrate,” Ekerefe stated.
On the explanation offered by Sylva on the three per cent, Ekerefe described the minister’s comment as an afterthought. He said what the minister should have done was to apologise and appeal “to the consciences of our people, rather than justifying an act which is politically tailored to favour the north and its allies in the industry.”
Ekerefe stated that it was “a rape to justice and equity for the National Assembly to pass three per cent equity share to the host communities, while passing 30 per cent to frontier basins which in our view is grossly inadequate and it is against the unanimous 10 per cent agreement by stakeholders for host communities when the National Assembly visited the region.
“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.
“In the light of the forgoing, 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 given natural resources can be managed by us, and not this impunity we’ve witnessed from a repressive federal government under President Muhammadu Buhari.”
