The Ijaw Youths Council Worldwide has called on the Federal Government to allocate licences for oil blocks in Gombe, Bauchi, Nasarawa, and Kogi states to the people of the Niger Delta region.
The council said allocating oil blocks in the northern part of the country to people of the Niger Delta would “ensure fair, just and equitable distributions of the country’s resources. It will also help to promote unity and economic integration in the country.”
The IYC President, Peter Igbifa, made the call in a statement issued in Port Harcourt, Rivers State capital on Tuesday.
The statement read in part, “Since the discovery of oil in commercial quantity in the Niger Delta, northerners have owned oil block licences and operated oil and gas businesses in the region and enriched themselves from the proceeds of these blocks and businesses.
“It gladdens our hearts that oil has been discovered in some states in the North. Explorations for more discoveries are also going on in the North.
“We are therefore calling on the Federal Government to also allocate the oil blocks in the North to Niger Delta.”
The IYC President expressed dismay over the non-completion of the deplorable East-West Road, saying sufficient attention was not being paid to the most critical road in the region despite protests from different stakeholders in the Niger Delta.
“We are calling on President Muhammadu Buhari to declare a state of emergency on East-West Road and direct his Minister for Works, Babatunde Fashola, to aggressively fix the road without excuses, the same way they handled issues concerning the Third Mainland Bridge in Lagos.
“We have noticed that since the East-West road project file was transferred from the Ministry of the Niger Delta to that of Works, there has been an inexplicable delay in executing the project.
“We are calling on President Buhari to fix the East-West road before bowing out of office,” Igbifa said.
