Worsening poverty and the failure of the Federal Government to implement agreements reached with militant youths are responsible for the rising wave of unrests and hostage taking in the Niger Delta, a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chieftain in Bayelsa State, Mr. Moses Taribi, has said.
The party chieftain who spoke in Lagos on Tuesday night against the backdrop of the pull out of construction giant, Julius Berger, from the state, said unless concrete steps were taken to address the backwardness of the region, youth restlessness would persist.
“The situation in the region today is so bad that poverty walks naked on the streets and the lack of future has forced our youth to resort to unconventional method of seeking redress,” he said. The political adviser to the state governor, Chief Asara A Asara, had last Thursday blamed “desperate politicians” for the crisis in the region, claiming that that they were the ones inciting youths to take up arms and hold oil workers hostage.
But Taribi, who was once the chairman of Ogboiri South/Tarakiri Local Government Area, said this could not be correct, as there was sufficient evidence to show that several years of neglect had led grinding poverty in the area so much so that all the basic things of life were non-existent in the most of the area.
He traced the people’s agitation for development to the colonial times, saying the quest for a better deal led to its being granted a special status. “It was declared a special development area, and based on that, the Niger Delta Development Board was inaugurated in the 60s,” he said, explaining that, “the board was intended to address the developmental problems of that very hostile environment.”
The party chieftain said that despite the board’s efforts nothing substantial was done to reverse the problems, adding that the situation became worse after independence, particularly after oil was found in Oloibiri in 1959.
Taribi traced the history of the people’s violent agitation to the 12-day revolution of Isaac Adaka Boro, in 1966, saying because the problems the Ijaw nationalist fought against persisted, the youth had found it necessary to rise against them.
According to him, as far back as the Second Republic, sufficient warning was given that if the problems of underdevelopment was addressed it would lead to violent crisis.
He said: “In 1982 the Governor of old Rivers State, Senator Melford Okilo, addressed the Senate and mentioned that our generation is a patient generation but that the generation coming after us may not be as patient. And that if the issues of development were not addressed then and they lingered on to the impatient generation, the Niger Delta region might turn out to be an area that the nation might be forced to pay particular attention to.
Taribi said all that had been happening recently were only confirming Okilo’s prediction.
Coming to the present crisis, he said, it was obvious that the failure of the government to respond to the development needs of the people, and agreements reached with militant youths were responsible for the escalation in the hostilities.
Specifically, he identified the arrest and continued detention of a Niger Delta youth leader, Alhaji Asari Dokubo, as one of the reasons for the rising wave of hostage taking, saying the militant youth had warned that unless he was released, they might be forced to go violent.
“These are not facts that were hidden, everybody, including the security agencies is aware of this. And from then on, this new wave of hostage taking has started, he stated, adding, “To solve this problem, the Federal Government should implement the agreements it reached with the youth, because I know that there has been a lot of dialogue with the youth.”
Consequently, Taribi dismissed Jonathan’s political adviser’s claim that politicians were behind the militant’s activities in the state, saying he should apologise to Bayelsans for giving them “misleading information” bothering on the security of the state.
The Eagles digest Magazine crave the indulgence of the leadership of the indulgence of the Niger Delta region to help in fostering peace and security,and contibute to the growth and developement of the Niger Deltas'
