In this interview with MIKE ODIEGWU, the President of Ijaw Youth Congress (IYC), Mr. Udens Eradiri, laments lack of development in the Niger Delta region, identifies the problems and proffers solutions.
Can you rate Niger Delta delegates in the just-concluded National Conference?
Some were very outstanding. Our own Ankio Briggs was very outstanding. We commend her. Pa E.K. Clark; I have never seen a man like this. The kind of work he does and the kind of strength he has is wonderful. You would see that people younger than him would be sleeping, but Pa E.K. Clark at his age never missed one sitting and his eyes would be shinning till the end of the discussion. Pa E.K. Clark would still go home and host meeting till the following morning and he would still be in the house without closing his eyes. I have never seen a man like this. I think he needs to be commended.
Sometimes, we were not happy about the way things were going but it was a house filled with different characters. As the President of IYC, I was not expecting them to get 100 per cent resource control. You see when you are in the agitation field, whatever comes, hold it so that you can use it to consolidate in the next level. It may be a mirage to think that I will have 100 per cent resource control today. It may not happen in my life time but let it be that I contributed to the process of getting to the 100 per cent and whatever comes out of that process. We went there with 13 per cent and I am sure we are coming out with more. This will further consolidate us at our various levels and in the next point of our agitation, we will be moving until we get to where we are going to. For me, our people did well, apart from a few of them who played master-boy relationship in the house.
Who are these people? I mean the Niger Delta delegates you said played master-servant relationship.
We will not at this point mention names because at the end of the day, they did well and it became a team work. They did not come home with an empty bag. It is now left for the president to consolidate on the report given to him by the committees that had been put in place. It must see the light of the day. Let it not end on the shelf as it usually does. Our people have done their beat, it is now left for the president to consolidate on it; come out with a blueprint for the implementation of the report. But for us, we will continue to agitate for 100 per cent resource control. We will use what we have to get what we want.
Did the Southsouth governors really play their part during the conference compared to their counterparts from the North?
This brings us to the issue of unity. The Southsouth governors are not united. In such an important discuss, you saw how the North were consolidating. Pa E.K. Clark took up the leadership and was doing his best. I don’t know what the Southsouth governors were doing on their part to further consolidate. But, the posture they presented was not encouraging. On individual levels, some of them tried. But, they should have been seen as a united force supporting the delegates where there were conflicts and bringing them together.
Even when the delegates were bringing feedback, some of these governors were not there. But in the north when the delegates went back for feedback, you see their governors, reviewing the process. In IYC, we were reviewing every week what was going on like some of the governors. The Bayelsa governor was involved in the process because I know that meetings were held in his place in Abuja. But like I said the governors would have done better assuming they are united.
Niger Delta is still lagging behind in almost all the sectors despite the attention the area has attracted in recent times. What is the way forward?
In fact, this is the reason why the IYC has decided to organise a youth summit so as to set agenda for young people in the Niger Delta. For me as the leader of all the youths from Ijaw extraction, I believe that we are lagging behind in many areas and in order to champion a new cause, we need to bring people together, bring international society together, bring other ethnic society, professionals to the table so that we can x-ray these issues and proffer solutions to these issues. We need to cross-pollinate ideas with other people and see how we can be a better IYC and prosperous Niger Delta going forward.
The summit would have been held, but we discovered that some of our key participants would not be around on the day we selected. We had to postpone it. We don’t want to organise a summit and do not get the targeted audience required. We know that the youths will be fully mobilised any day we call for the summit. But, they are not the only ones we want. We want the professionals and the political class to also be involved. So, we shifted the summit to on the 9th of October 2014.
How will this summit solve the problems of unemployment, lack of development and myriads of other problems still facing the region?
Now, we have realised that if we must move forward, then we must go back to agriculture. With agriculture, we don’t need rocket science. Agriculture has gone technological. So, you need certain partners to support you. Some of you are talking here today because our grandparents trained our parents through farms that they all had. Those days, secondary school used to have farms. When I was in primary school, we used to have farms.
What I am saying is that the richest nations in the world are agro-based nations. We cannot continue to rely so much on oil revenue when we have the potential to create wealth with agriculture as young people. These days young people beg too much on the streets. Many of them are begging for work when there is work already staring them in the face.
So, we felt that in a summit like this, we will make agriculture the basis for discussion. We want young people to organise themselves and go back to the farm and I believe that at the end of this summit the framework will be put in place to relate with government, Bank of Industries, Bank of Agriculture and other institutions to harness the energy of young people. This energy we are using to kidnap; this energy we are using for criminality; this energy we are using to walk the streets and beg, let us channel this energy to the farms, to agriculture and see where we will be in the next six months or one to five years.
Why are you talking about agriculture, which involves hard work when you know that the present generation of youths, especially from the Niger Delta, is looking for easy money?
Well, as for me, I don’t think the youths have an option here because first of all leaders brought this laziness among the young ones. I don’t believe that young people are not ready to work. All they need is leadership and direction and discipline from the leaders. If the leadership is disciplined, and say, this is how I want it to be, you will see that a greater percentage of the youths will follow. Others who will be docile initially after seeing how their colleagues are following and achieving results, will also join.
I will give you an example with the Amnesty Programme. When the amnesty was proclaimed, many people thought that ‘these people want to deceive us and arrest us’ so, they stayed away. But now that Amnesty Programme has produced experts, including young boys from the creeks flying airplane. Now everybody is agitating in the media. Young people now block roads agitating to be part of it; this same thing people didn’t want to be part of, even states are agitating that they have been sidelined. The time we were doing the amnesty, other states and other ethnic nationalities said that Ijaw people were the militants and that they were not militants. Now that it is sweet, everybody is now a militant. That is the point.
Are you saying that this summit, coming at this time, is not all political in view of the 2015 general elections because people think it is just another avenue to endorse President Goodluck Jonathan?
Firstly, the President is an Ijaw man; so, if we gather and we don’t talk about him, it means we are forgetting where we are coming from. You see people keep saying it is politics, yes, it is politics. The point is how can we go into gathering and we will not discuss the President. It is not possible. This is the President who has added so much value to Nigeria and has abandoned the Ijaw people, the Niger Delta people. I think this is the right time to drag him to the table. We want him to use this opportunity to talk to his people. The point is that the bulk ends on his table as the president.
He is our own and doing a summit without him is unfair whichever way they look at it. It is none of our business. The point is that we will get result from the President because what we are about to do need political power to be able to move it to the next level. We need commitment on the part of politicians. Don’t also forget that because he is going into an election we are using this to hold him. He wants votes from us and as young people we don’t want to be idle, we want to be engaged meaningfully. So, since he wants our votes, he should tell us how he can secure our future. So if we do not do it politically we will not get a result.
What are those things you think the president should have been able to do for the Niger Delta that he has not done?
We have over 30,000 workforce in Brass LNG. But, first of all we are not holding anything against the President on the situation we find ourselves. He is the President of Nigeria not the President of Niger Delta or the Ijaw people. He came to meet Nigeria in disarray and he has tried to put the ship in a steady cause, which we acknowledge.
Don’t you think it is time Bayelsa and other states in the region diversify their economies and stop depending on oil alone?
Yes, Bayelsa needs to look inward and try to use some radical approach to increase its revenue. And which is the best way? Agriculture. Bayelsa used to have one of the biggest rice farms in the country. All we need is to revive and intensify it.
Fishing. Traditionally, we are fishermen. I tell you all the food especially Nigerian food is now an international delicacy. If you go to any place in the world, Nigeria’s food is now an international delicacy. Before now, when you go to some places in the world, you won’t see Nigerian food to eat. But things have changed. Today, fried plantain is now an international food so the demand for plantain is high. The demand for banana anywhere in the world, is a big business. Here, we don’t plant banana, it grows by itself. It is God that has done it. Plantain grows by itself. So why don’t we harness this potential for the betterment of the state? If we do that in six months we will be exporting world class banana especially now that there is technology. I went to Isreal and discovered that they are planting plantain in an induced environment. Plantain and banana is one sure area now because of their demands.
Before, it was Ghana that packaged fish and other things for export. Now Lagos and other western states are taking over the market for African food in the world. People from the western part of Nigeria are living banks as managers to go and face farms. People are living oil companies for farms. Go to Lagos, from that Ajah axis, any fence you see is a farm. People are consolidating on farms because the market is there. So, why don’t we invest on farming?
I recalled that Bayelsa State, before this administration came on board acquired fishing trollers whether it was to siphon funds at that time. Surprisingly, these fishing trollers were immediately abandoned. They are lying fallow at Ogbia waterside. The agricultural ministry should help in putting these expensive trollers to use. Agge-Koluama is a big coast and there is a big-time fishing going on there. It is our fish but other people are coming to catch fish there. There should be a Ministry of Agriculture market maybe in the waterside somewhere so that when boats come they will take advantage of the market and you will see how far we will be raising money in the state. So, for me, l am surprised that we have not consolidated on that and time is running out.
As IYC, we are ready to work with the government to get the youths organised for the process. All we need now is the political will and commitment from the government. The government has done well in infrastructural sector, we want such revolution in the agricultural sector. They shouldn’t be telling us that our youths are not ready to work. I do not agree to that; give us the opportunity to bring them to be part of the process and when they fail, then you can now hold us responsible.
