The Adaka Boro Centre

The Submission of the Joint Revolutionary Council (Comprising the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta MEND, The Reformed Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force & The Martyrs Brigade) to the Niger Delta Technical Committee

1.             Sovereign National Conference Vs Resource Control

2.             Amnesty and Henry Okah Vs Peace and Rehabilitation

3.             Accountability in government Vs Corruption

4.             Environmental Integrity Vs Pollution

Our environment continues to be destroyed everyday by the criminal activities of oil and gas exploitation and exploration without strict conformance to acceptable international standards. Farmlands and creeks continue to bear the brunt of these activities.

In dubious collaboration with the government of the Nigerian state, Oil and gas companies have developed a structured system to intimidate, harass and assault community people who dare to rise up against them.

With little provocation, oil producing communities are razed down by armed soldiers of the Nigerian state.

We do not believe that the current government has enough sincerity to deal with the situation. They are being held hostage by Big Oil and dubious people in government who reap millions of dollars every year from bribes and kick-backs.

However said, the government of the Nigerian state must enact a law then and then effect an immediate ban on gas flaring. It is killing our people. It is giving us acid rain which destroys our waters, sea-life, housings and farmlands.

Punishment must be meted out for those whose facilities cause oil spillage. Most of the oil companies operating in the Niger Delta carry out their operations with standards that are far different from the kind of standards they operate by in their homelands. They say their goal is to cut costs.

They refuse to provide structured and timely maintenance of oil production facilities and allow these equipments decay and rot. These decay in turn causes in facility failure and results in spillages.

5.             JTF Vs Militants..Ogomudia

Many people agree that brigandage has crept deeply into the current unrest and armed agitation in the Niger Delta just the same way as financial recklessness has crept into the affairs of those who claim to have been given the mandate to govern their people.

The Joint Task Force is not any different. Today, they have become an added burden on the communities and societies over which they were called upon to police and administer peace and security.

More than 70% of the soldiers deployed under the JTF tag are themselves worse brigands than the so-called criminal elements that they were called upon to check. Most of these soldiers are very poorly educated and heavily unschooled in the art of peace keeping. Many of them are criminals who have infiltrated the armed forces of the Nigerian state the same way 'criminals' have infiltrated the ranks of the heroic combatants of the Ijaw and Niger Delta struggle.

Let it be known that most members of the Joint Task Force are gun runners, oil bunkerers, petty thieves and not peace and security keepers.

Evil begets evil. As long as the Nigerian state continues to deploy criminal elements as members of JTF, peace will elude the Niger Delta for violence will always beget violence.

We demand therefore a total withdrawal of the Joint Task Force from our region and  a replacement with properly trained and equipped law enforcement officers.

6.             Criminality

There are criminals everywhere. The best way to deal with criminality is through cleansing. What the Nigerian state needs today is total cleansing which must start from the top.

From the criminals who rigged elections by stuffing and stealing ballot boxes to those who were elected by such processes and those who steal and misappropriate billions from the coffers of government, criminality is criminality and should be punished.

What we have in the Niger Delta today is a case of Criminals in uniform and criminals in the creeks. Bandit soldiers who rape and assault women, extort monies and personal properties from wayfarers, bully innocent people, engage in oil bunkering, sea piracy and gun running etc.

7.             Ijaw and Riverine dichotomy – Willinks Commission

We believe that the leadership of the Ijaw National Congress (INC) and the Conference of Ethnic Nationalities in the Niger Delta have already made submissions in this regard.

Their submissions stand.

However, let us remind ourselves that the special status that was recommended by the Willinks Commission for the Ijaws in the Niger Delta and their Ogoni brothers as a result of their peculiarly difficult terrain has now been bastardized into a 9-state Niger Delta Development Commission thereby diluting the efficiency of planned interventionist programs leaving the Ijaw territory largely underdeveloped.

We demand therefore that the Special Status recommended by the Willinks Commission for the Ijaw territory be immediately declared.

8.             Underdevelopment

With all its wealth, the Niger Delta today is much too underdeveloped with the Ijaw territory being the most affected. We cannot add anything more but demand that the Technical Committee work towards ensuring that past reports be immediately acted upon without delay.

The Willinks Commission Report must be interfaced with the more recent Ogomudia Report to ensure the deployment of timely, strategic and people driven intervention measures and not the phoney programs and policies that we have witnesses in time past.

To fast-track development in the Niger Delta region especially in the much challenged Ijaw territory, we demand therefore the following:

•  Jobs & Businesses- Communities in the Ijaw and Niger territory should be given stronger participatory roles in the oil and gas industry. This will strengthen the creation of jobs and establishment of more businesses across the region.

 Such participatory roles include; recruitment of more indigenes of the Ijaw and Niger Delta territory, award of oil industry contracts to qualified businesses owned by Ijaws and Niger Deltans.

Ijaw businesses must be allowed to reap from the tremendous windfalls that abound in the oil and gas industry.

Oil lifting rights and ownerships of oil fields must be provided to any interested indigene of the Ijaw and Niger Delta territory who demonstrates a competency to deliver on stated and expected objectives.

While the Otedolas, Dangotes, Kase Lawals, Danjumas and many other non-Niger Deltans have been richly compensated and have become billionaires with our oil wealth, our people remain largely shortchanged. This trend must be stopped immediately. Our oil must be used to build our people. There will be no need for oil exploitation in the Niger Delta if our oil will continue to be our curse.

Let us remind ourselves that Ijaws who are occupiers of the major riverine areas where oil and gas exploration and exploitation activities take place have been rendered jobless as result of the destruction effect of exploration activities and the toll it has taken on their core occupation which is fishing and farming.

This loss of jobs remains a key motivator of the current unrest in the Ijaw and Niger Delta territory. It would therefore be expedient that Ijaws be given strong consideration in recruitment and appointment into the oil and gas industry.

This demand cannot be negotiated. It is a prerequisite for lasting peace in the region.

• Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) – We demand that the Petroleum Technology Development PTDF and its operations including award of scholarships should be an exclusive preserve of the people of the Ijaw and Niger Delta territory whose lands bear the oil and gas resources whose proceeds fund the program. The current structure of the PTDF is wholly defective and a slap on the face of the people of the Ijaw and Niger Delta territory.

It is atrocious to challenge the funds generated from petroleum resources harvested from the Ijaw and Niger Delta region to cater from other regions except there is a surplus. For now, there is none. There are too many ill equipped schools in the Niger Delta and too many families who cannot provide good education for their children and wards. This evil must be corrected immediately.

Proceeds from the Petroleum Technology Development Fund should be wholly channeled to upgrading the quality of education in all the nooks and crannies of the Niger Delta.

All universities in the Niger Delta must be brought to world class standard. All qualified students of the Niger Delta should be given immediate scholarship to any university of their choice in any part of the world and more vocational centers must be established with funds from PTDF.

Anything less will not be accepted.

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