N'Delta Avengers vs. FG: The Unreasonable Demands, Dialogue & More, Presidency Breaks Silence

 

In an exclusive interview with The Sun, renowned constitutional lawyer and Chairman, Presidential Advisory Committee against Corruption, Prof Itse Sagay, has warned that the President Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal Government will not to succumb to the unreasonable demands of the various Niger Delta militants in the bid to achieve stability in the oil rich region.

 

Below are excerpts from the chat;

 

What are their demands?

 

You can see that both of them are unreasonable. When you want to negotiate, you put out reasonable things one can comply with. How can they say that Federal Government should stop lifting of oil when the mainstay of the economy is petroleum? If they feel that Niger Delta region is not getting enough of proceed from their own commodity, they can say what should be the case. They can go by what had existed before in the 1960, 1963 constitution. But to so say that Federal Government should have no hand in oil activities is absolutely unreasonable and it means they are not serious. Again, what do they want foreign governments to come and do when the oil companies themselves are here? You can bring up an impossible condition so that nobody will accept it just because you do not want to negotiate. I think that is what is happening.

 

I think they are confused. And until they themselves can sit down and come out with rational proposals, I don’t think there is anything anyone can negotiate with them. Two, we have to be very careful; I mean the Federal Government, about who to negotiate with. We don’t want a situation where you negotiate with conditions that will end up putting huge sum of money in the private pockets of militants who will then go and enjoy a good life like Tompolo who accumulated billions of dollars and became a little god running his own private army and living the life of a king of an independent country. We don’t want that situation. Whatever Federal Government does must be done in such a way that the outcome will benefit everybody in the region and will lead to actual development not just money being handed over to a few militants who will just blow it and spend it for themselves, while the situation remains the same, leading to another group of militants coming up again to make selfish demands for their own pockets rather than for the region.

 

If they have reasonable proposals, there is no reason why the Federal Government should not negotiate. For example, if their proposal is to increase the amount of derivation or to increase the level of their involvement in the oil industry, yes, Federal Government can negotiate. If it is about the question of creating autonomy and federalism, the Federal Government can negotiate. These are constitutional issues which could be negotiated. After such negotiation, the matter has to be brought to the appropriate institution, which will look at them and make amendments. If there are reasonable conditions like that, they can be negotiated. But I read one of their conditions where they said government must release Kanu and defreeze the account of Tompolo. When you are doing that, you are making an impossible condition because already Tompolo’s account is frozen based on allegation of corruption. So, if you say it should be defrozen, in effect you are saying the Federal Government should give up the struggle against corruption. Therefore, there is no reason why any other person, including Dasuki, who is now under investigation, should be prosecuted. They should then release all their accounts to all of them. You know how many they are now. We are talking of over a 100 people as at the last count. You cannot do it for Tompolo alone. Since that is impossible, nobody should take them very seriously.

 

Click here to read the full interview on The Sun.