BY SIMON EBEGBULEM

BENIN CITY—THE Founders Association of Delta State Oil Producing Areas Development Commission, DESOPADEC, yesterday, kicked against what it described as alleged imposition of members of a new board on the people of the state following the sacking of members of the former board.

Besides, the association demanded that oil producing communities be given their statutory 13 per cent derivation fund to manage by themselves.

In a statement by 27 representatives of oil producing communities in Delta State, the group commended the Delta State House of Assembly for sacking the board, saying the action was “a very welcomed relief and development.”

The statement lamented that their people still “suffer in squalor and neglect as the board had become a bureaucracy with commitment to themselves only.”

It warned that as long as its call for derivation was ignored, there would not be peace, adding that “we ask that our 13 per cent derivation  funds be given to us to manage by our people. This can only be achieved by people, honest and sane and answerable to us.