Ijaw Youths Kick against Alleged Plot to Appoint Non-indigene as Amnesty Coordinator 

 Sylvester Idowu in Warri

The Ijaw Youth Council (IYC) worldwide has threatened to resist moves to replace the Coordinator of the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP), Major General Barry Ndiomu (rtd) with a non-Ijaw, noting that such an appointment will be rejected.

Spokesman of IYC, Binebai Yerin Princewill, at a press conference in Warri, yesterday, said the council, representing Ijaw youths across the world, “will fight with everything” to resist the plot by a cabal in Aso Rock to replace Ndiomu with a retired general from another ethnic group in the region.

He said it was solely the Ijaw tribe that consolidated and sustained the struggle for resource control and self-determination while other tribes were scared not to be labelled as infidels.

According to him, the Ijaw’s struggle led to the creation of the Amnesty Programme by the federal government.

“While the ninth leadership of the Ijaw Youth Council (IYC) Worldwide will continue to consolidate and sustain the Ijaw struggle for self-determination and resource control, we have it from credible sources that some individuals close to His Excellency, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, are hatching dangerous plots to install an Urhobo retired military general as the Coordinator of PAP to succeed Ndiomu. 

“It is our assurance that the Ijaw Youth Council, representing all the Ijaw Youths in this world, will fight with everything that we have to resist this plot that the cabal in Aso Rock is plotting and hatching. It is our warning to those who are surreptitiously making such a plan to urgently retrace their steps as we are going to use every available means to resist this from coming to the limelight,” he said. 

While expressing reservations over the federal government’s appointments with regards to Ijaw sons and daughters not being included in political appointments across the Niger Delta states under President Tinubu, Binebai said the Ijaw youths would not sit and watch when people were trying to further undermine and undo the Ijaw people. 

“It is a known fact under President Tinubu that the federal government has carefully wiped out Ijaw sons and daughters who have been heading ministries, departments, and agencies. They have done this in NNPCL by removing  Adokiye Tombomieye, Vice President, Upstream of the Nigeria National Petroleum Company Limited, and a host of others. Today, no Ijaw son or daughter is holding any key office in the Nigerian Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs). To us, this is not funny at all,” he added. 

Recalling that the federal government under the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua established the Niger Delta Presidential Amnesty Programme in 2009 as a programme to quell the rising armed agitation in the Niger Delta region that was solely championed by the Ijaw people across the region, Binebai said the ethnic group lost their lives and communities to the struggle.

“While there is no need for us to go into details on how Ijaws lost their lives and our communities and kingdoms levelled to the ground, which was a clear case of genocide, our people were massacred mercilessly and ruthlessly. While we do not want to remind ourselves of these painful memories, it is our advice that the Federal Government of Nigeria should allow sleeping dogs to lie,” he said. 

Binebai noted that while the IYC Worldwide, the largest youth movement in the Niger Delta, would continue to push for a united Nigeria and a peaceful Niger Delta region for which they will promote harmonious relationships with neighbouring tribes in the region, he warned that they would not accept to be sacrificing without harvest.