ISOKO National Youth Assembly, INYA, yesterday, described
the appointments into the board of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation,
NNPC, as bastardisation of the country’s federal character principle. NNPC It
said: “The appointments, skewed in favour of some regions, send a dangerous signal
to us in the Niger Delta, particularly the Isoko nation, where we had started
believing that the Federal Government was moving to restore peace and
tranquillity.” INYA, in a statement by its President, Mr. Ovie Umuakpo, in
Aradhe, Isoko North Local Government Area of Delta State, said: “This is a
brutal rape on our intelligence as a people.
“One would have expected the President to match up words
with actions when he said the unity of the nation is non-negotiable or is the
President fulfilling his campaign promise of giving 99 percent of our
collective resources to regions that gave him more votes and one percent shoved
down the throat of other components of the nation? “When 67 percent of
available slots goes to a region that contributes nothing in terms of oil
output and mere 13 percent comes to us in the South-South, where everything is
produced, is a difficult concept to understand.”
“How long shall this cow called South-South be continuously
milked to feed a particular region fat while we die of marginalization? This
models the Emperor Joseph Stalin’s brutal example when he plucked off all the
chicken’s feather, wounded and damaged it and watched the poor chicken squawked
and screeched in agony and then watched again the wounded chicken creeping back
toward the edge of the flock to peck at the bits of grain remaining on the
ground which he had dropped, all to perpetually keep the chicken’s head and
knees bent in total submission to his superiority.
“This reveals the rascality, treachery and wickedness of the
phrase called ‘Federal character ‘ when it pertains to recruitment and
appointment and it is the mother of all corruption. “It is the manifestation of
the fraud that exists at the point of recruitment into federal parastatals
where those from a particular region are seen as special breeds deserving of
all fleshy and juicy slots while the patient dog called South-South will get
the remnant bones.
“We implore the President to see himself as the father of
the nation. He should walk the talk of belonging to everybody and belonging to
nobody for sustainable peace and progress. We therefore, urge the government to
be sensitive to our diversity and plurality by urgently correcting this anomaly
for peace and stability.”
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