NDDC: Right group demands managerial slots for people of Imo oil producing areas

From Okwe Obi, Abuja

The group explained that the plea became expedient sequel to the shameful infrastructure decay as a result of environmental degradation, high level of poverty in those areas, stressing that the gesture would attract government presence.

Its National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko, at a press briefing, yesterday in Abuja, maintained that it would be very wicked, uncharitable and abuse of the NDDC Act if the alleged marginalisation continues.

Onwubiko said: “We have watched with considerable trepidation and disappointment, the enduring unjustifiable violations of the extant enabling law setting up the oil minerals producing areas development commission otherwise known as Niget Delta Development Commission (NDDC).

“We are also concerned about the general state of infrastructural marginalization of the entire crude oil producing areas.

“The case of the Imo State crude oil producing areas is particularly humiliating and constitute the gravest violations of environmental and fundamental human rights.

“The state of degradation of the environment caused by the activities of the operators of the crude oil minerals drilling firms and the central government is to put it mildly, utterly despicable and reprehensible.

“To now observe that these specific areas in Imo State that is statistically noted for being the home to some of the largest crude oil minerals deposits in the country and holds the records as being the area in which the largest concentration of gas deposits in Africa are found.

“But yet this uniquely gifted crude oil minerals producing area in Imo State has consistently got the short end of the stick in virtually all the previous strategic management appointments of the top three officers of the NDDC, is unjust, unconstitutional, unfair and morally disgusting.

“It of the highest imperative need for us in the organised human rights community in Nigeria to appeal to Mr. President who is the appointing authority to do the needful by considering nominees from the Imo State crude oil producing areas to hold one of the top three executive positions in the NDDC so the longstanding injustices against these marginalized people from a place that is the hen that lays the Golden Egg for Nigeria ‘s sustainability for years, are carried along and adequately given their due rights and privileges.

“We do hope that President Muhammadu Buhari in his comprehensive drive to sanitise the management of the NDDC with the forensic auditing of the financial health of the NDDC, will inevitably see the  need for the correction of lopsided appointments in the leadership of the NDDC.

“This we think is the basic requirement of the fundamental principles of equity and fairness which the All Progressives Congress campaigned vigorously around these key thematic issues that won them the central government in the 2015 general elections.”