By Egufe Yafugborhi

DELTA Ijaw Oil and Gas Producing Communities have described the contentious 2016 Delta State Oil Producing Areas Development Commission, DESOPADEC, Bill now before the state assembly as a display of “injustice and gross abuse of power against Ijaw interests.

Okowa

The Ijaw oil communities in a letter to Governor Ifeanyi Okowa condemned the “lopsided” allocation of the 25 proposed Centralized Projects in the bill amounting to N3,928,903,844 over which they claimed to be most marginalised among the ethnic nationalities in the scope’s of the commission’s intervention.

The Ijaw complaints signed by Bishop Samson Amajene of Gbaramatu Kingdom among other community leaders stated; “The allocations are skewed against Ijaw, the second highest oil and gas producer in state, in favour of the Itsekiri and Urhobo ethnic nationalities of the Chairman and the Managing Director of the Commission respectively.

“Of the 25 proposed Centralized projects, the Chairman’s Itsekiri ethnic nationality are allotted six (6) projects worth N1,769,257,11.00, the MD’s Urhobo seven projects (N572,646,725.00), Ndokwa, four (N330,000,000.00) and Isoko, two (N300,000,000.00) while the Ijaw got a paltry one (1) project of N300,000,000.00. This is provocative.”