ZIK GBEMRE SPEAKS ON IYC DEMAND FOR IJAWS EXCLUSIVE LEADERSHIP OF PAP: I BLAME JONATHAN AND THE INC…  

I don’t blame the Ijaw Youth Council, IYC. I blame the tribalistic Goodluck Jonathan and Ijaw Elders under INC.

If not for the untimely death of President Musa Yar’Adua which gave Goodluck Jonathan the space to play ethnic card with the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP), while appeasing the violent Ijaws with Amnesty, Yar’Adua, if alive to see the programme through, would have established corresponding benefits for the peaceful ethnic groups in the region who didn’t join violence.

When Yar’Adua appointed Maj Gen Godwin Abbe on the inception of PAP and later Air Vice Marshall Ochuko Ararile, the programme was well coordinated and funds diligently allocated with integrity, everybody connected was happy.

As Jonathan came in and made the Coordinator’s office a patronage entitlement for his ethnic Ijaws only, PAP drifted into a cesspool of corruption where militant leaders fight dirty with successive Coordinators over set funds diverted into bogus projects while the target beneficiaries suffer denial of entitlements.

If Ijaws brag about being the violent mongers who brought amnesty and so must enjoy the Coordinator’s office exclusively for as long as PAP last, I don’t envy them. I won’t advise ethnic neighbors to copy their violence which they call militancy. After all if Amnesty was not a fraud, a conspiracy to arrogate to Ijaws the benefits for an entire region, how come oil theft and assets vandalism have not ceased.

If Amnesty is no fraud, how come the federal government still needs to award multi billion naira contracts to Tantita, and spend billions more on the military occupation of the oil producing space to protect oil and gas assets if militancy has stopped.

On a final note, Ijaws can incite ethnic neighbors to start their own violence to get their Amnesty, but that I won’t advise. What the government needs to do is give opportunities to other oil producing ethnic groups averse to militancy.

The IYC posture is creating the misleading impression to the world that only Ijaws exist in Niger Delta or even bear oil and gas in the region. It is a dangerous trend that does no party any good if the government fails to reward the law abiding people in the region while gratifying the violent people with PAP and bogus contracts.

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