Angry youths from the nine states of the Niger Delta have threatened to embark on a massive protest to shut down activities at the National Assembly and the various Nigerian High Commissions in the United States and the United Kingdom over the freezing of the accounts of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC).
According to the youths, the decision to move against the National Assembly and the nation’s High Commission is to put a final stop to the deliberate act of wickedness against the region and prompt the international communities to prevail on President Muhammadu Buhari to take decisive action on the inability of the NDDC to fund the payment of scholarships of hundreds of indigenes of the region studying abroad on the sponsorship of the commission.
Speaking to newsmen after a meeting with various youth groups involved in the planned protest in Abuja, Hon. Sunday Frank-Oputu noted that though they are saddened by the action of the National Assembly members to frustrate the NDDC and turn indigenes of the region studying abroad to beggars, “the angry youths of the region have decided to take the battle to them in Abuja and chase them out until they unfreeze the account of the commission so as to meet up with its commitments.
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“So we have resolved to give the National Assembly members 48 hours to unfreeze all NDDC accounts. Two, we are also telling them that they should stop the unwarranted, unsolicited, oversight function they think they are doing to the detriment of the Niger Delta which we know is because of what wants to happen in this country. They know they will soon be exposed that’s why they are doing this. After the 48hrs, if they refuse to unfreeze the NDDC account we are going to take over the national Assembly.
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“That without fear of any contradiction, we are going to mobilize from all the states in the Niger Delta and we are going to take over the National Assembly in a very peaceful but stubborn manner. It is to ensure that this National Assembly members, who feel without them no other person will exist, to conform with the tenet of democracy.
“We will tell them that we are pained for what has happened. We are pained for what they have done to us. So we are of the opinion that since they feel that they want to do it the hard way, we will also show them that it’s not only Senator Omo-Agege that knows how to go to the National Assembly and steal the mace. That, we as a people, will shut down the National Assembly. Nobody will sit in that national Assembly since they said Niger Deltans, who are on scholarship through NDDC for their Master Degrees and PHD programmes should all be stranded in the foreign land”.
“What do they think they are doing, what do they want to achieve in all this. Under this Covid-19, people of the region are suffering with their families and have become beggarly in foreign land because of their studies. NDDC was about paying them their stipends, and then their outstanding school fees and the rest now they have blocked all that they could not pay anything anymore and the people are already complaining over there.
“We are going to arrange with them because am constantly in touch with them even in the foreign land, they are going to protest seriously to the various Embassies and possibly close them down let there be a monumental embarrassment to the Buhari’s government so that they will stop this thing, because we don’t know who is the President of this country at some point.
Is Buhari still the president? And if Buhari is the president of this country, and he has ordered that there should be a forensic audit, who then is deputy senate president that said he wants to stop it?. Who is Omo Agege that said he wants to stop the president’s order?”
“It is unfortunate that these things are still happening at this time in this country. The same people who were saying when Saraki was doing certain things against the president’s order, they persecuted Saraki. The same persons are the ones flouting the President’s order so who is now better. So, when Saraki was having certain issues with the President, this same Lawan, this same Omo Agege, this same Oshiomhole were the people who were saying Saraki was stubborn, Saraki is this. We must bring him down”
“Today finally, they have succeeded and taken over the leadership of the National Assembly and the President ordered a forensic audit and the same persons are doing everything to forestall it. Just because of useless ambitious programmes that they have already mapped out. That if this forensic audit is possibly completed, so many of them will not have any face to face their communities.
Let me tell you one thing, if you look at the record of jobs completed by the NDDC that is with the presidency, and all other agencies like in Bayelsa, out of the 105 there is no one that you don’t have in records more than three, five projects but go to the communities, you will not see any project”.
“Particularly in my community, there are three water projects that are in the completed list of projects in NDDC but no one is not there. All these are things being put by National Assembly members and they have collected the money. Jobs awarded to them are given to their cronies. When they are paid, they collect all that money. We have two concrete roads, one the contractor did it to half, the other one they did not even go to site. Concrete works of N200million, there is nothing. There is no community in the Niger Delta that has any NDDC project. It is claimed to be cited but there is none for anybody to see.”
“We are talking of over N300million that had gone down the drain for nothing. And you are saying oh we have just discovered forty billion naira fraud so we want to probe it. That we are giving them 48hrs to unfreeze the NDDC account or we are coming to take over that National Assembly and they will be surprised how we will get there. If they are thinking we will just come and then they will have police on the road to arrest us, they don’t even know what they are doing. We will enter there, and we are going to disrupt their proceedings”
