Prominent Niger Delta elder statesman, Edwin Clark has called on Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) not to resume bombings of oil infrastructures in the area as efforts were ongoing toward prevailing on the Federal Government to fulfill its promises to people of the region. Clark made the call while speaking with newsmen on Sunday.
He lamented that while concerned statesmen in the region were making frantic efforts to ensure cessation of hostilities in the region, some political appointees of the current administration are still busy deceiving the president and politicizing the agitation. He attributed the disruption of the fourth general assembly of PANDEF earlier scheduled for October 26, 2017 in Port Harcourt to those erroneously claiming that the group was working for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
According to him “It is very absurd for one to be insulted both by your own people who are monetary-minded, unpatriotic and by government. But we cannot run away from our responsibility. Whatever happened between February and August last year, regarding pipeline bombing was not in anybody’s favour.
“That was why some of us came out; we convened a meeting of Niger Delta elders, leaders, monarchs and stakeholders at the Petroleum Training Institute, PTI, Effurun, Warri. Over 500 people attended the meeting. The governor of Delta state, Senator Ifeanyi Okowa, addressed the meeting, which was the beginning of PANDEF.
“We, therefore, appealed to the youths to cease hostilities, that we would negotiate on their behalf and they accepted. On November 1, 2016, I led over 100 delegates to meet Mr. President. We called for dialogue and submitted our 16-point demand.
“Unfortunately, government, either deliberately or lack of knowledge, did not understand the 16-point programme because they are running away from it and the programme contains almost everything we wanted. One of them is the Nigerian Maritime University, NMU, Okerenkoko, which the Federal Government had accepted would open by September or October.
Recall that the NDA had issued a statement on Friday announcing the suspension of ceasefire. The group accused the Federal Government of failing to fulfill its promises and threatened to resume hostilities in the region. Before the ceasefire deal, the group had carried out series of attacks on oil pipelines and other infrastructure, forcing some oil companies to halt exploration activities in the region.
