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By Sunday Ani
The e Consultant, Communications and Strategy, Office of the Senate President, Kenny Okolugbo, has denied reports in the media that the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio was making mockery of Nigerians who were protesting against hunger and bad governance.
According to the reports, Akpabio was quoted to have said that while Nigerians were on the street protesting, they would be in their homes eating.
But reacting to the report in a statement yesterday, Okolugbo said: “The Senate President never said he and others would be eating while the protesters would be protesting. It is uncharitable for media houses to trend such statements that will bring him in conflict with the Nigerian masses. He was only quoting the Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), who said the Niger Delta youths have never had it so good with himself and the amnesty boss on the saddle, and that the current government belong to the youths, who will not be interested in regime change, but rather will own the government.”
Akpabio was reported to have made the remarks at the NDDC sponsored youth stakeholders’ summit in Port Harcourt on July 30.
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According to Okolugbo, the import of Akpabio’s visit was a declaration that the nine states of the Niger Delta would not be involved in any protest. “As the most senior government official from that region, he feels their pain as he recognises that there is hunger in the land,” he added.
He said the senate president while speaking at the event, reiterated that protest almost led to anarchy in Kenya and the negative effects were still reverberating. He said while the degradation in the Niger Delta due to oil exploration and exploitation persists, there have been no protests. “The fact is that the government is doing so much to address the situation at hand, like signing into law the minimum wage bill, the North West Development Commission, and the South East Development Commission among others.
“The President also launched the immediate payment of N50,000 youths to earn programme per month as a way of ameliorating the pains and hardship being experienced, but like the pregnant woman that takes nine months to deliver, the pains that would accompany the birth of the child are also unbearable.
“The people of the Niger Delta have been urged to exercise patience with the administration of Bola Tinubu because one year is not enough to judge the performance of the administration,” Akpabio was quoted to have said.
According to Okolugbo the youths, who were filled with so much joy and excitement, passed a vote of confidence in the senate president as well as a voice vote of no protest. “The empowerment scheme is for those not gainfully employed, and it was reiterated that it would be devoid of politics and strictly for the nine states of the Niger Delta,” he stated.
