By Anthony Arugba

PRESIDENT, Niger Delta Youth Association, NDYA, worldwide, Comr. Victor James, has said that despite the fact that Niger Delta is the producer of crude oil for over five decades, its people have remained impoverished.

Comrade Victor James, NDYA President

James, who spoke during a paper he presented at the United Nations Conference in London, decried the poor state of the people, saying that there was no concerted efforts by the Nigerian government to allow the people benefit from the resources it was producing.

He said, ” They have made it more like an anathema or taboo for Niger Delta people to be part of and benefit from our own oil wealth. This is sad and disheartening because we are been managed like some kindergarten school pupils by both the political elite, particularly from the North and the management of multinational oil and gas cooperations/companies.

” Considering the adverse effect of this carefully orchestrated system aimed at undermining the advancement, development and progress of our people within the Nigerian space, it behooves the leadership of the Niger Delta Youth Association to present before the honorable conference the unmitigated plight of the Niger Delta people and the continuous Thomas Hobbess’s Leviathan approach to this issue by Northern politicians hiding under cloak of government, both military and civilians throughout five decades.

James argued that previous military dictators, had, under what it termed ” Indigenous participation’, shared the oil blocks in the Niger Delta to associates, friends, very loyal servants and family members of which 90 per cent of the beneficiaries are Northern Oligarchs, while no ethnic group in the Niger Delta region, no matter how organized was considered for a sole ownership, joint venture or profit sharing of any oil and gas block for the development of its immediate communities.”

The NDYA leader argued that, these acts of colonialism, imperialism, economic realism and deliberate economic sabotage of the Niger Delta economy and the weakening of the capacity of the region to use its oil and gas wealth to develop other sectors of the Nigerian economy has led to restiveness, militancy, continuous  pipeline vandalization and proliferation of local refineries with its attendant environmental pollution among other social vices too numerous to outline.

He added, ” It will be of great interest to this conference to learn that a bill- Petroleum Industry Bill, PIB has been incarcerated on the floors of both Houses of National Assembly of Nigeria for over 15 years simply because that bill addresses the deliberate hurdles placed on the path of the Niger Delta people to partake in the business of their resources and also slated a meagre 10 percent profit of oil and gas profits for the host communities.

He alleged that Nigeria’s Northern political agents of hegemony did everything humanly possible to lay that bill to rest because, ” According to former Governor of Kano State, Alhaji Rabiu Kwankwaso ” It will cause insecurity in the North” but we ask, how will the progress of the Niger Delta region, using the resources within our own land cause insecurity in the far away Northern Nigeria”

James noted that, recently the Acting President of Nigeria, Prof. Yemi Osibanjo engaged in a tour of the Niger Delta region and Osibanjo reportedly declared the Federal Government would grant licenses to host communities to build “Modular Refinaries” in place of the many refineries run by unempowered and jobless youths in the Niger Delta, but expressed shock that, the federal government, few days ago, announced that it has reconsidered that project and that it would no longer build the modular refineries.”

He claimed that, ” Again, we see the hands of Northern hegemony agents in this reversal since their mission is to make sure that the Niger Delta people end up with underdevelopment and to live in poverty and squalor.”

He, therefore, called on the United Nations Organization to, without bias to the occupants of the UN Security Council, who have interest in Nigeria’s oil industry, but work assiduously to checkmate what he described as ‘inhuman policy against the Niger Delta people’ before it is too late.