Two Bayelsa-based Ijaw youth groups; Ijaw Monitoring Group (IMG) and the Niger Delta Peace Advocacy Group (NDPAG), have condemned attempts by some people in the region to derail the succession order at the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC).
IMG and NDPAG categorically described recent protests and calls by youths in some of the states in the region for the confirmation of the Professor Nelson Brambaifa-led management team by President Muhammadu Buhari as mischievous and an attempt to break the harmony existing among the states of the region.
In a statement jointly issued by the leaders of IMG and NDPAG, Birinemigha Dennis and Bekesuo Adigo respectively in Warri, the groups frowned at the protests, alleging they were sponsored by the Acting Managing Director of the NDDC, to hoodwink the Federal Government into confirming him, against the act establishing the commission.
The groups, which pointed it out that it is now the turn of Delta state to, statutorily, produce the occupiers of both offices of the Chairman and Managing Director of the NDDC, alleged the commission, under the watch of Prof. Braimbraifa, had not added value to the lives of Niger Delta people, and warned against such protest in Bayelsa again.
Calling on President Mohammadu Buhari to do the needful, the groups said โwithout sentiment, the positions of the Chairman and Managing Director are the rights of the people of Delta State and does not call for debate taking a critical look at the Act establishing the commission in 2000.
โThis Commission was not established for political patronage rather it was put in place to address the developmental needs of the Niger Delta people after years of neglect by successive governments so as to curb the violence which erupted in the region during the genuine struggle of the people for the development of their communities.
โThe NDDC is statutorily charged with the responsibility of formulating policies and guidelines for the development and rehabilitation of the region which, of course, is the crux of its core mandate.
โHowever, since inception, it has been managed and administered by qualified indigenes, who were appointed based on a classified and established mode of engagement as entrenched in its establishment Act for purposes of justice, fairness and equitable representation of member states of the commission for the avoidance of dominance and marginalization of anyone state against the other etc.
โThe NDDC establishment Act, 2000 in part IV, Sec. 12 (1) states that โ โThere shall be for the commission, a Managing Director and two Executive Directors
who shall be indigenes of Oil producing areas starting with the member states of the commission with the highest production quantum of Oil and shall rotate amongst member states in order of productionโ, the statement said.
