The Ijaw Youth Council (IYC,) has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to take heed of the covert plan by unidentified self-seeking persons to extend the tenure of the current Niger Delta Development Commission, (NDDC), Board members, warning that it will spark off inter-state rivalry in the Niger Delta region.
IYC President, Oweilaemi Pereotubo, in a statement on Thursday said: “Any move to extend the tenure of the present Board members in the Commission may spark off inter-state rivalry.
“It is the turn of another state, not Akwa Ibom, to produce the next Managing Director after the expiration of the tenure of the present board in December. No state should be denied its rights to occupy the offices assigned to it by the NDDC Act. Those making such dangerous move should be wary of their actions.”
“President Buhari should not be cajoled into doing the biddings of those self-seeking individuals. The entire Niger Delta region will be engulfed in flames of discord if the tenure of the present board members is extended.
“All the states in the region have qualified APC stalwarts to be appointed to the various offices. Let the offices in the board continue to rotate among the states for a single tenure, which has been the conventional practice.
“IYC will resist with all vigour, any attempt to elongate the tenure of the Nsima Ekere-led NDDC board. Let the usual conventional practice be followed.
“The attention of the IYC has been drawn to a rumour trending in the media that the current NDDC Board members are planning to extend their tenure, which should expire in December 2017.
“We do not want to believe that the news has any atom of truth because such move is against all known conventional practices in the Commission. It is statutory that the current board members are only completing the tenure of the last board members, dissolved by President Buhari on assumption of office.
” The tenure of the present board members will end in December this year.
“The offices of the board are rotational among the nine oil producing states. The plurality of the states in the Niger Delta cannot make it tenable for a state to occupy one office twice. In the history of the commission since it was established, no board member has occupied his office twice. It cannot be now that such a thing will be allowed to happen,” Pereotubo said.
