By Jimitota Onoyume

PORT HARCOURT— Niger Delta Youth Association, NDYA, has commended elders of the region for requesting the Federal Government to re-open Warri, Port Harcourt and other sea ports in the region.

A picture taken on September 16, 2015 shows workers trying to tie a pipe of the first refinery in Nigeria, which was built in 1965 in oil rich Port Harcourt, Rivers State. The Port Harcourt refinery is Nigeria’s oldest, built in 1965, nine years after crude was first found under the marshy soil and creeks of the delta, where the Niger river meanders to the Gulf of Guinea. Refineries in nearby Warri and Kaduna in the north central region were built in the years that followed, while a new plant was added to the same site in Port Harcourt in 1989. In recent years, however, it became a byword for corruption, a murky, state-run body where billions of dollars in revenue apparently disappeared. AFP PHOTO

A statement by the President of the group, Victor James, the Vice President, Ibiso Harry and seven others, said the body was impressed with some of the demands by elders of the region when they met with President Muhammadu Buhari on the aegis of Pan-Niger Delta Forum.

According to the body, it was necessary the that the Federal Government reviewed the amnesty programme.

“That some demands like the Federal Government’s granting of oil and gas blocks should rather be expanded to cover communities of the entire Niger Delta as simply giving a few individuals from the Niger Delta oil and gas blocks will not create the wealth needed to move the region forward. The reason is because our region is suffering from institutional and systemic poverty, therefore clusters of communities within all ethnic nationalities should be granted oil and gas blocks as doing so will create wealth for the people,” the group said.