Niger Delta leaders' voyage of opportunism

Joel Nwokeoma

@okoromajoel

I have just learnt that some so-called leaders of the Niger Delta region who were ferried to Abuja to meet with the President as part of the process of quelling the restiveness that has disrupted oil production activities that "brought recession upon Nigeria" have demanded allocation of oil blocks and contracts for the protection of oil pipelines from the President as a precondition for the restoration of peace in the area.

You mean the self-serving and criminally complicit gang working in cohorts with the Nigerian state responsible for the devastation, poverty and misery in the Niger Delta could look the President in the face and make such bizarre demands?

Whatever happened to the 13 per cent derivation another gang, some of whom followed in the latest trip, negotiated and got from the Obasanjo government years ago? What happened to the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs created by the Yar'Adua government? I do not want to remember the so-called interventionist agency called NDDC that has done more damage to the region than the atomic bomb in Hiroshima through corruption? We thought that by now the Niger Delta would have become a Paradise by now.

Much as we can blame the Nigeria state for the blight that the Niger Delta has become, the conveyor belts for such perdition upon their people were the same people asking for oil blocks. In 17 years, can Niger Delta governors and sundry political leaders tell us what they did with all the money that accrued to the various levels of government in the region?

If the Nigerian government listens to this band of machinery parading themselves as leaders, it will the greatest mistake made after the famous Mistake of 1914!