The Ijaw Youth Council (IYC) has made seven (7) demands to the Federal Government following the council’s review of the recent nationwide protest that rocked the country.
The IYC announced their demands in a press briefing held in Yenagoa, the Bayelsa State capital on Thursday.
It would be recalled that the IYC while stating “dark sinister motives” from some parts of the country as reasons for not joining the protest, made a promise that the group will meet to design its own demands before the Federal Government.
In line with its earlier position, the IYC has made the following demands:
1. East West Road: it is our call before the Federal Government that the East West Road should be given a serious attention by the ministry and agencies involved as we are not comfortable with the snail pace the road is taking, there shall be no excuses on the speedy fixing of the entire East West Road, particularly the Niger Delta axis of the road.
2. Coastal Road: while the IYC lauds His Excellency, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for initiating the Coastal Road, it is our demand that Coastal Road should also start from Bayelsa, Delta, Edo, Rivers. It is our fear that if this is not done, the road might only cover the South-West without getting to the South-South that is producing the funds for the project.
3. Refinery: it is our demand that the refineries in the country must be encouraged within to ensure that they produce refined products to serve the growing needs of Nigerians. We cannot depend solely or majorly on importation to serve the growing population in Nigeria. We must move away from dependency to a producing state.
4. Today, going forward, the Ijaw Youth Council (IYC) and the Ijaw people want to have a say and a sense of belonging in the Oil and Gas Industry. For so many years, our people are hardly employed, neither the few ones that are there are hardly promoted. This dichotomy has to be reviewed to accommodate the Ijaw and the Niger Delta people.
5. Shell Divestment: the Ijaw Youth Council has taken a position on the Shell’s Onshore Assets Sale to a Consortium that unless our people are given the right of first refusal and our people are included, we cannot accept the purported sale of Shell’s Onshore Assets in the Niger Delta. Shell must also clean-up our environment properly before its planned divestment.
6. We are calling on the Federal Government of Nigeria and the multinational oil companies operating in the Niger Delta region to relocate their IOCs headquarters back to the Niger Delta region as their original operational base. This injustice has festered for too long.
7. We need proper explanation on the dangerous move by the Federal Government of Nigeria for piping Gas from the Niger Delta to far away Morocco without our people included or participating in the process. The IYC is seriously concerned about this scary development.
The Ijaw youth body also informed some notable figures from the Niger Delta including Nigeria’s oil minister, Sen. Heineken Lokpobiri, PAP Administrator, Dr. Dennis Otuaro, MD of NDDC, Dr. Samuel Ogbuku, and other relevant stakeholders in the region on the need for engagement “on the way forward for the region and Ijaw nation in no distant time.”
