By Etop Ekanem
LAGOS—President of the South-South Youth Council, Lagos State, Mr. Tomzine Benedict has called on oil multinationals operating in the Niger Delta region to relocate their corporate headquarters to their areas of operation.

Speaking to newsmen in Lagos, Benedict said that with their offices in Lagos and Abuja, Niger Delta youths had not benefited in terms of employment.

He contended that if there were no infrastructure on ground to absorb youths being trained in different skills through the amnesty training programme, the essence of the training would be defeated.

Benedict said: “Are they being trained to become useful citizens in the society or they are trained to go back to the creeks to resume hostage-taking and vandalisation of oil facilities?

“If there are no infrastructure to absorb them after their training, they will definitely go back to the creeks.”

He also called on President Goodluck Jonathan to ensure that the benefits of the amnesty training programme go round all the ethnic nationalities in the Niger Delta region.

Benedict, who made the call against the backdrop of protest by some ethnic nationalities over alleged exclusion from the programme, said all youths from the region participated actively in the struggle and so none should be excluded from the amnesty training scheme for the ex-freedom fighters.

On the insurgency of the Boko Haram sect, he said politicians from the Northern part of the country were sponsoring Boko Haram to destabilise the government of President Jonathan because they don’t want the South-South in the presidency.

… as rights group flays call for review of Federal allocation
By Emeka Mamah
KADUNA— Kaduna-based Civil Rights Congress of Nigeria, CRCN, has flayed the call by the 19 Northern governors for the reduction of allocations to oil-producing states of the Niger Delta region to ensure the increase in allocations to northern states.

President of CRCN, Mr. Shehu Sani, who made this known, said the problem of northern governors was not necessarily lack of funds to execute projects but mismanagement.

Chairman of Northern Governors’ Forum, NGF, Dr. Babangida Aliyu was quoted as speaking of the need for a new revenue allocation formula with a view to reducing allocations to states in the Niger Delta and increasing same for northern states.

However, Sani said northern governors share their federal allocations to traditional rulers, clerics and their political cronies instead of using such money for the betterment of their societies.

In a statement entitled Northern Talakawa Do Not Benefit from Federal Allocation, by Sani and made available to Vanguard yesterday, CRCN said: “The call by Niger Governor and Chairman of the NGF on the need to re examine the revenue sharing formulae of the federation with a view to reducing the allocation to states in the Niger Delta and increasing same to the Northern states is ridiculous.

“Governor Aliyu and other Northern governors should be thinking of how they can harness the human and natural resources of the region to improve the quality of life of their people and make the region less dependent on federal charity that has become a reason for it’s ridicule and undignified insolence.

“It is an irony that Aliyu as a Governor, who has consistently loathed the begging culture of Almajiri in the north, has now elevated it to the art of statecraft.

’’It is a fact that the states in the North need more resources to tackle the problems of abject poverty, unemployment and destitution that has greatly contributed to the state of perversive insecurity. But it is also equally factual that the existing funds allocated to most of the states is not used for the betterment of lives of the teaming pauperised Talakawas (commoners).