Niger Deltas Asari Dokubo threatens to resume militancy over resource control Friday, 18 July 2014 NIGERIAS ongoing disagreements over the way the countrys resources should be shared took a further turn for the worse yesterday when the Niger Delta People Salvation Front (NDPSF) said it is preparing to return to the creeks to resume its armed campaign. Over recent weeks, delegates at the conference, convened to decide on Nigerias future have been at loggerheads over the vexed issue of resource control and how to share Nigerias oil wealth. Northern delegates have suggested a increments in derivation for northern states, demanding that they get an automatic 5% of oil revenue. However, southern delegates on the other hand want to see a return to the original 1957/58 agreement entered into at independence whereby federating units took charge of all the resources within their domain and kept 50% of it. Earlier this week, northern youth group, the Arewa Youth Development Foundation (AYDF) said southerners should relocate from the north of the country as the disagreement got bitter. In what appears to be a swift response and further escalation of the bitter spat, the NDPSF, led by Alhaji Mujahid Asari Dokubo, the former leader of the Ijaw Youth Council, has threatened to take up arms and return to the creeks. Alhaji Dokubo was a youth militant leader who fought a bitter armed struggle with the authorities in the Niger Delta for years, before agreement to a ceasefire under an amnesty programme in 2009. Alhaji Dokubo said: “We are stating that going back to the creeks may be inevitably preferable, rather than allow for the wealth of our people to be used to develop or rehabilitate a parasitic, barren yet ignorantly arrogant north. We are ready to mobilise our people from across the Niger Delta and even in diaspora to stand up for definite showdown and direct action. The north must no longer be sustained at our expense. Our God-given resources belong to us and not Nigeria, so the end of Lugard’s Nigeria is now.” NDPSF spokesman Rex Anighoro, added: “Let us state very emphatically that irrespective of the final determination of the national conference, our minimum expectation and demand as a people remains 100% control of our resources or nothing. The national conference can go on and propose even 100 states, agree to rehabilitate and develop areas ravaged by insurgency and internal conflicts, agree to develop solid mineral resources and whatever but let it be known that not a dime of the resources of the people of the Niger Delta should be factored into this odious compromise. “It has now come to a definitive moment to demand the abolishment, henceforth, the sustenance of the barren states of Nigeria with the resources of the Niger Delta in the name of monthly allocation amongst others.” Over recent weeks, members of the Northern Delegates’ Forum (NDF) have warned that proposals by the Committee on Devolution of Power on the ownership and control of mineral resources may split the country in two. Earlier this month, several NDF delegates even threatened to pull out of the National Conference in protest at what they termed biased and one-sided decisions.
Posted on: Fri, 18 Jul 2014 12:00:46 +0000