INC to Obasanjo: Resources in Ijawland don’t belong to Nigeria

The Ijaw National Congress on Friday condemned former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s attack on the National Secretary of the body, Ebipamowei Wodu, during a forum in Abuja on Monday.

The INC also debunked claims by Obasanjo that oil and gas deposits in Ijaw land and the Niger Delta region belonged to all Nigerians.

Obasanjo, according to the President of INC, Prof. Benjamin Okaba, unnecessarily tackled Wodu, when he was presenting the Ijaw position at an interactive session at the forum organised by the Global Peace Foundation in collaboration with Vision Africa.

The theme of the forum was, ‘Inclusive security dialogue: unbundling barriers, a strategic meeting for key influencers’.

Okaba, who reacted to the incident while briefing journalists at the Ijaw House in Yenagoa, said the INC national scribe was highlighting the neglect, suffering and general underdevelopment of the oil and gas-rich Niger Delta by the Nigerian State when “Obasanjo went into a momentary fit of outburst.”

He, therefore, demanded an apology from the former President as his unwarranted attack on the pan-Ijaw social-cultural organisation’s national secretary amounted to an attack on the Ijaw and Niger Delta people.

Okaba, who read a statement titled, ‘Obasanjo’s flight of fantasy: A joke taken too far’, said, “Obasanjo and his likes, who have over the years denied the Ijaw nation every opportunity to annex, own and control her God-given resources must be told in very clear and unmistakable terms that we cannot be intimidated, hushed and harassed into a moronic silence.” Punch