Akwa Ibom indigenes yesterday took
to the major streets in Uyo, the state capital, protesting alleged
Federal Government’s inequitable allocation of oil blocs.
The carnival-like protest was championed by a socio-cultural organisation, Mboho Mkparawa Ibibio.
The protesters carried placards with
various inscriptions, calling on the Federal Government to address the
injustice in the allocation of oil blocs.
The protesters marched from the
secretariat of Mboho Mkparawa Ibibio along Udo Udoma to the Government
House in Barracks, chanting solidarity songs.
Some of the inscriptions on their
placards read: North should stop using our oil money to sponsor Boko
Haram or kill our people; Revoke oil blocs allocation and re-issue to
accommodate Akwa Ibom people; Mboho demands equity and fair play; Oil
exploration and exploitation in Nigeria since 1957-2013, Niger Delta has
nothing to show; We own the land, we suffer the effects and North owns
the money; FG should stop marginalising Akwa Ibom people; Don’t use our
resources to punish us; We deserve better treatment in Nigeria.
Addressing newsmen, the International
President of the group, Nse Ubeh, said the people of the Niger Delta
region are the ones who have over the years borne the brunt of the
national burden that have metamorphosed to the country’s wealth.
Ubeh expressed sadness that Niger Delta
people were suffering unimaginable degradation and deprivation
occasioned by decades of oil exploration and exploitation.
His words: “It is indeed ironic and a
sad episode of the Nigerian political and economic scheme to note that a
region that produces more than 90 per cent of our national wealth, and
which has rightly been referred to as the layer of Nigeria’s golden egg,
could be so marginalised and dehumanised.”
Quoting Amnesty International report of
2009 and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Ubeh said oil
exploitation in the Niger Delta has brought impoverishment, conflicts,
human rights abuses and despair to the majority of the people in the oil
producing states.
“Amnesty International went on to report
that pollution and environmental damage caused by the oil industry have
resulted in violation of the rights to health and a healthy
environment, the right to an adequate standard of living and the right
to gain a living through work for hundreds of thousands of people.
“Also, the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP) on its part describes the region as suffering from
administrative neglect, crumbling social infrastructures and services,
high employment, social deprivation, abject poverty, filth and squalor,
and endemic conflict,” Ubeh said.
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The pple in power should always put themself in thesame shoes of those pple they are governing before they will make any decisions as to the formulated policies on the sharing of the nation wealth. It is unjust,unfair and patial if the region producing the nigerian golding eggs are deprive of their appropriate share of the wealth generated by the sales of the fomer.
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