President Muhammadu Buhari/File
Leader of Pan Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF) Edwin Clark has claimed that the President Muhammadu Buhari authorities is sidelining the Niger Delta area.
Clark made the allegations, weekend, the place he known as on “Buhari to at once redirect a correction of the varied imbalances of those very delicate points within the curiosity of fairness, equity and peace.
“We advocate strongly that there should be a deliberate evaluate to contain certified indigenes of the oil and gasoline host communities in high and center degree positions in addition to within the allocation of oil blocks/marginal fields within the oil and gasoline business to host communities.
“As a consequence of Federal Government’s informal and torpid method, which some perceived as lack of dedication and seriousness to the speedy decision of the present Niger Delta disaster, the persistence of the youths and different vital stakeholders within the area was waning.
“More worrisome is the way the Federal Government has conducted appointments to positions in the management of the nation’s oil and gas sector, which is operated in our backyard.”
As acknowledged by him, “Nearly all the highest and center degree positions within the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, and its subsidiaries are manned largely by northerners, reasonably than these from the areas. As it stands as we speak, the oil producing communities of the Niger Delta are utterly alienated.
“A prepared living proof is the composition of the nine-member NNPC Board, which Mr. President constituted in 2016, the place the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, who's chairman of the Board by advantage of his portfolio, and Dr. Thomas John, a former group managing director of NNPC from Cross River State, are the one members from the South-South. Six administrators out of the 9, together with the sitting Chief of Staff to the President, Mallam Abba Kyari, are from the Northern a part of the nation, which don't produce oil.
“To our utter dismay and rude shock, of the 55 top management staff of the NNPC made public in September 2017, only 19 are from the South, while over 36 are from the North, a non-oil producing zone. This was in the face of the protestations by the people of the Niger Delta over the obvious marginalization in the NNPC Board composition.”
He puzzled if that depicts an equal Nigeria.”