NIGER DELTA YOUTHS MAKE CASE FOR HENRY OKAH

Henry Okah

APPARENTLY worried by the spate of kidnapping in the Niger Delta and other parts of the country, the Central Organising Committee for the convocation of the Niger Delta Youth Parliament has pleaded with President Umar Yar'Adua, to grant Henry Okah, leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) a presidential pardon.

Secretary of the organising committee, Mr. Wellman Warri, told our correspondent in an interview yesterday in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, that the MEND leader who is being tried in camera for treason ''is a key factor in any enduring peace process in the Niger Delta''

 He claimed that the youth parliament was being planned as a way of giving the restive youths of the oil and gas region a political voice in the affairs of the region.

''The peoples of the Niger Delta are generally not pleased with the secret trial of  Henry Okah'', Warri said, adding, ''we, the people of the oil region believe that Henry Okah will not get justice in a secret trial''.

On the spate of kidnapping in the oil region, he said it will be wrong to blame the situation entirely on the youths. ''It was politicians who introduced arms in the region as repressive instruments to scare away their opponents. But before them, illegal oil bunkering barons raised their private armies on a scale that was not as alarming as what power seekers did for their 2003 elections'', the Niger Delta youths said.

Also speaking, the President of Egbema Movement for Justice (EMJ), Mr. Robinson Uroupa, said decades of neglect and marginalisation equally contributed in throwing up the current level of arms conflict in the area.

''I most sincerely hold the view that while we blame the Federal Government for the oppressive laws that impoverish our people, we should also be quick to question our leaders on what they have done with the resources that have so far flowed into the region'', he said.

According to Uroupa, ''since the creation of the defunct Mid-western region in 1962, the Ofunama, infact the entire Egbema Kingdom of Edo State has remained forgotten. There is no basic necessity of life whatever in the area, and yet it is an oil-producing belt of Edo''.

Continuing, he added, ''the plight of the people of Egbema Kingdom in Edo state is enough to force their youths to carry up arms against the unjust system that holds them down''

''As one of the numerous groups facilitating the Niger Delta Youth Parliament, we are opposed to violence. We are pushing to confront the Nigerian state intellectually with bare facts'', he said.