Niger Delta Youths Warn Buhari Against Merging NDDC With Ministry

Youths of Niger Delta have warned the in-coming administration of
Muhammadu Buhari against reducing the Niger Delta Development
Commission (NDDC) to a parastatal under the Ministry of Niger Delta
Affairs.

The warning came following the alleged plan by the next government to
implement the recommendations of the Steve Oransaye Committee Report
on the rationalization and merger of some Federal Government
Ministries, Departments and Agencies, MDAs.

A coalition of 26 youth and ex-militant groups under the aegis of
South-South Mandate, rising from a meeting in Warri, Delta State,
vowed to resist any move that could impede the rapid transformation of
the region currently being undertaken by the NNDC.

According to a communiqué signed by the Chief Convener, Mr. Victor
Akpe, making the NDDC a parastatal under the Ministry of Niger Delta
Affairs would mean bogging the commission's projects down with civil
service bureaucracy.

"In as much as we grudgingly decided to allow peace to reign after we
were dubiously and maliciously rigged out of the presidency, our
reluctant acceptance of that faulty March 28, 2015 electoral
abracadabra over a sitting President from Niger Delta, a charade never
recorded in the history of electoral contest in Nigeria, should not be
misconstrued as capitulation by the youth of Niger Delta, now
galvanized under the South-south Mandate, SSM," the coalition said.

"While we are still evaluating the import of March 28, 2015
presidential poll robbery through a well-orchestrated regional
gang-up, procedural compromise and massive intimidation of the
electorate in some parts of the country, we shall vehemently resist
further humiliation and annihilation of our people". The youths noted
in the communiqué which was made available to newsmen in Abuja, that
as the closest government interventionist agency to the poor and
neglected people of the Niger Delta region, they would not tolerate
any attempt to further suffocate the NDDC since it remained the only
government agency that has direct impact on the oil bearing
communities.

"Niger Deltans shall no longer allow their interest to be subjugated
and trampled upon by the Federal Government of Nigeria under whatever
guise," they added.

They emphasized that the NDDC must be allowed to function
independently under the presidency as presently constituted and be
allowed to continue to draw its funding from the current First-Line
charge.

The youths warned that they neither issue threats without a cause, nor
strike without exhausting all possible channels of consultation and
seeking redress. Rather than merge the commission with the ministry,
the youths urged the incoming Buhari administration to release the
entire N700 billion being owed it and ensure prompt release of its
funds henceforth.