The Ijaw Youth Council has challenged the Federal Government to conduct the trial of the detained leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), Henry Okah, in the open if it has nothing to hide.

National Secretary of the IYC, Udengs Eradiri, in an exclusive interview with Daily Sun in Yenagoa, said that the President Umar Yar’Adua administration was demonstrating hypocrisy by its insistence that the trail should be in camera.
According to him, the excuse that Okah’s trial would threaten national security is a way to cover up those in government who work with Okah in the business the government has accused him of engaging in.

He maintained that since the government is aware that Okah would spill the bean, it is trying to shut him up by preventing people from following the proceedings.

His words: “I said that Henry Okah is being tried in secret because he is going to expose a lot of powerful people including government officials involved in bunkering business. The whole thing is a racket. They said Okah is into bunkering, gunrunning, kidnapping.

These are big time business which only the rich can finance. If they try him in the open he would expose these people, so they are making it secret. We are challenging the government that if they know their hands are clean they should try him in the open. We have said the secret trial is to cover a lot of people that are involved.

“His trial would expose criminals within government circle. They said he is a criminal and they are trying him in secret to cover the criminals. Bunkering in this region is sponsored by the elite, who have the money. They have all the connections to defraud this country .When they say illegal bunkering and they want to kill our youths, it is not the youths that have problem but the government officials involved.

If government is sincere, let them bring him out for trail to be witnessed by Nigerians.”
Eradiri explained that the IYC was ready to ensure peace in the region, but noted that the Federal Government must be prepared to deal with the people of the region with sincerity.