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The Action Congress (AC), Bayelsa State chapter, has described the position of the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) on the age-long neglect and deepened crisis in Niger Delta region as provocative.
The Action Congress (AC), Bayelsa State chapter, has described the position of the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) on the age-long neglect and deepened crisis in Niger Delta region as provocative.
Apparently reacting to the increasing wave of militant activities in the region which culminated in the attack of the Bonga offshore oil field operated by the Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC), ACF had blamed the leaders of the region for squandering all the monies that have come to the region which had increased the underdevelopment of the region.
But the AC, in a press statement, signed by its Secretary, Miriki Ebikibina, said the comments of the ACF 'is most unfortunate, uninformed, diversionary, misleading and provocative," adding that Nigerians are aware that the remote causes of the crisis in the region is the continued outright neglect and delinquency of the Federal Government, 'as well as monumental injustice, disservice and insensitivity to the plight of the people of the region whose resources have been exploited with no compensation or visible development in the region."
The party pointed out that instead of making provocative statements, the ACF should have call for reform in the scholarship scheme of the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTDF) which has been politicized to the detriment of the Niger Delta people.
The statement reads: 'The statement coming from ACF at this moment of truce into the Niger Delta crisis is not only diversionary but inciting and embarrassing capable of instigating a justified militarization of the Niger Delta region by the Yar'Adua administration.
'Action Congress (AC) had expected the ACF to have reacted and call for a reform into the discrepancies and the faulty scholarship scheme of the Petroleum Development Trust Fund (PTDF), which has been politicized and detrimental to the progress and development of the Niger Delta region, taking into cognizance and solution to the Niger Delta crisis.
' The ACF should not only withdraw the provocative and embarrassing statement but apologize to leaders of the Niger Delta region, to have singled out the Niger Delta region and desist from making provocative and diversionary statements, if they cannot contribute proactively and pragmatically to the age-long neglect and crisis in the region."