Date Published: 10/05/09

HURIWA tasked Federal Government on Amnesty

HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS’ ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA, HURIWA, a development focused and democracy inclined non-governmental organization is of the strong view that for the sixty –day blanket amnesty granted to all armed militants in the oil bearing Niger Delta communities which lapsed on Sunday October 4 th 2009 to achieve lasting and sustainable results, the developmental challenges posed by the widespread poverty afflicting the majority of the Niger Delta people and the gross infrastructural underdevelopment of the heavily crude oil endowed but massively neglected communities must be tackled frontally without undue bureaucratic delay.

The group which believes strongly that sustainable peace is unrealisable when poverty is widespread in any community, urged the Federal Government to view the issue of physical and general infrastructural development of the Niger Delta as a national emergency.

The Rights Group made this view known in a media release endorsed by its national coordinator Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko after an emergency parley to review the development recorded in the ongoing negotiation between the Federal Government and some erstwhile armed militant youths in the Niger Delta which culminated in a general declaration of amnesty by President Umaru Musa Yar’adua.

HURIWA commended the Federal Government and the militant leaders like Henry Okah, Chief Ateke Tom and Chief Government Ekpemupolo [Tompolo] and the residents of the Niger Delta for constructively negotiating a peaceful and meaningful cessation of bloody violence in the Oil producing communities and tasked the Federal Government to ensure that the entire people of the neglected communities in the Niger Delta are carried along especially in the implementation of a comprehensive and result-oriented infrastructural facilities like educational, health, environmental and transportation facilities that will rapidly lead to the progressive development of the communities.

The Group urged the government at all levels to tackle the issues of unemployment, poverty, insecurity and poor roads network as quickly as possible so as to achieve lasting peace in the oil producing communities. It also called on the anti-graft agencies to check the increasing cases of political and economic corruption in the Niger Delta states and local councils. HURIWA affirmed that it is shocked that the Niger Delta States and local Government councils receive so much revenue from the Federation account but without any meaningful improvement on the living condition of the tax payers.

According to the Rights Group; ‘’we are indeed pleased with the pace, ways and manners and strategies that have been adopted by both the Federal Government and leadership of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, MEND, in the ongoing peace talks to end the spate of violence in the oil rich communities in the Niger Delta and to give the people of the oil bearing communities a sense of belonging by providing sustainable and durable socio-economic infrastructures to make the people live meaningful and economically empowered lives as citizens of Nigeria’’.

‘’We are however concerned that should the Federal Government fail to follow up the cessation of physical hostilities in the Niger Delta with rapid infrastructural development, then we may as well say goodbye to peace in Nigeria because the type of youth militancy that may follow the betrayal of trust on the side of the Federal Government may threaten the territorial integrity of Nigeria as a political entity. The Federal Government must take the issue of providing workable and lasting infrastructures in the oil producing communities as a top priority and as an integral developmental plan’’, it said.

The Rights Group also challenged the Federal government to monitor closely the operations of the multinational oil companies in the oil rich communities in the Niger Delta so as to prevent further monumental environmental degradation of the communities just as the Human Rights group urged the Federal Government to use legislative measures and punitive sanctions against all multinational oil companies engaged currently in gas flaring in the Niger Delta communities because of its adverse environmental damage to Nigeria.