By Bob Majiri Etemiku
BENIN CITY, Nigeria – Africa Network for Environment and Economic Justice, ANEEJ, has commended Acting President, Yemi Osinbajo for visiting the Niger Delta to feel the pulse of the people and reassure them of the Federal Government’s commitment to address the lingering issues of the region.
ANEEJ, in a press release in Benin City on Tuesday, signed by its Executive Director, Rev. David Ugolor following an evaluation of the visit, praised the Acting President for “ordering contractors who collected monies for various projects in the region and abandoned them to return to site or go to jail.”
Rev. Ugolor, who made a scintillating presentation at the Town Hall Meeting in Benin during the visit of the Acting President assured that ANEEJ was prepared to work with him to ensure that his promises made at the Town Hall Meeting were realised in the region.
“We need to fix the Niger Delta and this task cannot be left for government alone. ANEEJ through its Strengthening Civic Engagement Project supported by USAID had, in collaboration with LITE Africa produced a Citizens Report Card, CRC which revealed numerous abandoned projects by the NDDC and Min. of Niger Delta Affairs among other NDIs, the Federal Government needs to ensure that such issues are resolved.” Rev. Ugolor stated.
He called on the Federal Government to ensure that it institutionalizes citizens’ participation in the process of developing the region in line with Open Government Partnership, OGP commitments of the present administration.
“We need to improve the effectiveness of the Niger Delta Institutions for the region’s mountain of problems to be addressed and citizens’ participation in their own development is fundamental ,” Ugolor said.
It would be recalled that the Acting President had told the Niger Delta Stakeholders Forum in Benin City that: The Niger Delta “is a story of many years of corruption that has deprived our people especially people from the oil producing communities of their means of livelihood. That is one of the issues that we intend to address.
“We want to impose a new way of doing things, a new era for oil producing communities in Nigeria. This is an important engagement, it is not an engagement that we are taking likely at all. The reason why we have spent the few days going from community to community, state to state is because this is a serious engagement.
“I will be working with the NDDC and the Niger Delta Minister to ensure that we get all abandoned projects on track and that we get defaulting contractors to account. And I have already ordered that all contractors who have abandoned their projects back to site.
”We are going to ensure that any contractor who has taken money and abandoned the project is prosecuted, they must be held accountable. Nobody will be allowed to abandoned a project and take away the money,” Acting President Osinbajo told the gathering of Niger Delta stakeholders in Benin.
