Posted by Abayomi Regos on
I wish to urge South South leaders in the Confab not to go back on their decision on the resource control issue.
I wish to urge South South leaders in the Confab not to go back on their decision on the resource control issue.
I find the attitude of the North on the mater quite repulsive. How can they dictate to the owners of the oil the percentage they ought to have? The question to ask is, why the people whose land produces the wealth of the nation should languish in poverty.
Though I am an indigene of Popo Aguda in Central Lagos, Lagos State, I have travelled the length and breadth of the country and I have seen the deprivations that are the lot of the people of the oil producing areas. The entire environment has been devastated by oil exploration. There is water everywhere but it is not drinkable as a result of pollution. The farms are no more; both land and fish farming. The people are hungry and there is mass poverty in the land.
It is time the North stopped lording it over the rest of the country like a child using tantrums to blackmail an adult to support its position. I don't want to sound inflammatory but I believe that if the situation were reversed the North would even want a higher percentage. I remember the former managing director of NEPA, Alhaji Bello, once came on the television to say that northerners were paying a lower tariff for power than southerners because the North owned the Kainji Dam.
The fact of the matter is that the South-South deserves more than it is even demanding.
Abayomi Regos,1A Adegoke Close,Ayobo, Lagos State.
Saturday Punch, July 09, 2005