– Senator Waku criticized militants in the
Niger Delta region for their violent act
– He says the government should be tough
on them
– He says Nigeria can survive without oil
Senator Joseph Kennedy N Waku who is a
chieftain of the Arewa Consultative Forum
has challenged the Niger Delta to drink their
oil and they would hold on to their
agriculture.
In an interview with Vanguard, Waku
criticised militants in the Niger Delta region
for blowing pipelines and trying to hold the
government ransom.
When asked about what he thought about
trying to dialogue with the militants, Waku
said:
“What kind of dialogue? Let them bring to
table what they want. Let them do what they
are doing, they will also suffer it. Are they also
not suffering when they ruin the economy? Are
they not facing the same problem like you and
I? They are talking of marginalization today.
If you create Biafra today, is Biafra solidly
Igbo’s? It’s not. When you go there, you
would find a southern minority who will tell
you that they don’t want to be part of it, even
among the Igbo. Some Igbo will tell you that
they don’t want it. If there is definitive kind of
discrimination against certain segments of the
country, that needs to be addressed because
injustice creates dissatisfaction. If there have
been injustices against one particular group in
this country, let’s address it and not by taking
the law into their hands.
That is criminality. We are also affected but we
want to take it in a matured approach. You
cannot go and begin to destroy state
apparatus in order to achieve your agitation, it
is against the law. I am not in a position to
talk about which contract was revoked
because I am not involved in that.
If those contracts were illegally awarded
without going through the due process and the
current administration wants to follow due
process, what is bad about that? Go and do
your investigation on that contract to see
whether the old law that qualifies one for such
contracts were made. What do you award
contracts to militants for? In the first place,
the name ‘militant’ is criminality. It is only this
country that somebody will come back and say
I am a militant and then ‘you award him
contract.’ If they claim to be agitators as they
are saying, then let them come out with their
demands and not by holding the state to
ransom.”
“What do they need? Let them come out and
tell government that ‘this has been our
farmland, it has been devastated, we have no
land to farm anymore’ and then bring a
proposal to the federal government. This is
how it should be done than issuing threats. If
I were the president, I would have ended that
thing by now.
“Yes, by closing the whole thing down. Before
oil came, didn’t this country exist? So, what
are you talking about? We have been
blindfolded and Nigeria became so lazy, a
nation of cheap money. Before the oil, we had
cocoa, we had palm oil, groundnut and
pyramid, and those were the things that
actually helped to develop the oil.
“At a point, we in Benue challenged them
that okay,’ let them go and drink their oil, we
would eat our yams and then see who will
survive.-------
Naij
Niger Delta region for their violent act
– He says the government should be tough
on them
– He says Nigeria can survive without oil
Senator Joseph Kennedy N Waku who is a
chieftain of the Arewa Consultative Forum
has challenged the Niger Delta to drink their
oil and they would hold on to their
agriculture.
In an interview with Vanguard, Waku
criticised militants in the Niger Delta region
for blowing pipelines and trying to hold the
government ransom.
When asked about what he thought about
trying to dialogue with the militants, Waku
said:
“What kind of dialogue? Let them bring to
table what they want. Let them do what they
are doing, they will also suffer it. Are they also
not suffering when they ruin the economy? Are
they not facing the same problem like you and
I? They are talking of marginalization today.
If you create Biafra today, is Biafra solidly
Igbo’s? It’s not. When you go there, you
would find a southern minority who will tell
you that they don’t want to be part of it, even
among the Igbo. Some Igbo will tell you that
they don’t want it. If there is definitive kind of
discrimination against certain segments of the
country, that needs to be addressed because
injustice creates dissatisfaction. If there have
been injustices against one particular group in
this country, let’s address it and not by taking
the law into their hands.
That is criminality. We are also affected but we
want to take it in a matured approach. You
cannot go and begin to destroy state
apparatus in order to achieve your agitation, it
is against the law. I am not in a position to
talk about which contract was revoked
because I am not involved in that.
If those contracts were illegally awarded
without going through the due process and the
current administration wants to follow due
process, what is bad about that? Go and do
your investigation on that contract to see
whether the old law that qualifies one for such
contracts were made. What do you award
contracts to militants for? In the first place,
the name ‘militant’ is criminality. It is only this
country that somebody will come back and say
I am a militant and then ‘you award him
contract.’ If they claim to be agitators as they
are saying, then let them come out with their
demands and not by holding the state to
ransom.”
“What do they need? Let them come out and
tell government that ‘this has been our
farmland, it has been devastated, we have no
land to farm anymore’ and then bring a
proposal to the federal government. This is
how it should be done than issuing threats. If
I were the president, I would have ended that
thing by now.
“Yes, by closing the whole thing down. Before
oil came, didn’t this country exist? So, what
are you talking about? We have been
blindfolded and Nigeria became so lazy, a
nation of cheap money. Before the oil, we had
cocoa, we had palm oil, groundnut and
pyramid, and those were the things that
actually helped to develop the oil.
“At a point, we in Benue challenged them
that okay,’ let them go and drink their oil, we
would eat our yams and then see who will
survive.-------
Naij
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