Bayelsa State Governor, Senator Douye Diri, has said that Arewa youths are most ignorant about what it is happening in the Niger Delta for faulting his statement about the velocity of oil spillage that occurred at the Aiteo Eastern Exploration and Production Company’s facility in Nembe Local Government Area of the state.
Gov Diri, while visiting the site of the oil spill at Nembe last Tuesday, said the spill was the worst he had seen, but that the Arewa Youths Consultative Forum (AYCF), during a press conference in Kaduna yesterday faulted his claim.
Speaking on Saturday in Yenagoa during the All Ijaw Summit with the theme: “The Nigerian State and the Ijaw Question”, organised by the Ijaw National Council (INC), the governor said he did not need to be a petroleum engineer to defend his people on the oil spill.
The governor’s spokesman, Daniel Alabrah, in a statement, quoted him as urging the Ijaw nation leaders to speak out on issues of injustice and under-development confronting the ethnic nationality until they were addressed.
He said, “I have never played politics with the health and development of our people, and if the Arewa youths think that what I said is to over-politicise the situation in Nembe, then I want to believe that they are the most ignorant people on what is happening in the Niger Delta.
“The Niger Delta people view the 13 per cent derivation from the prism of 87 per cent deprivation. The three per cent allotted to oil-producing communities is paltry and we will continue to oppose it until it is addressed.”
Also speaking, Chairman, Board of Trustees of the INC, Chief Edwin Clark, represented by Amb Godknows Igali, said the Ijaw had been unfairly treated and therefore called on the ethnic group’s leaders, particularly National Assembly members and other elected officials, to speak out on the injustices meted out to the Ijaw nation.
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