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Omoniyi Salaudeen
Ijaw Elders Forum (IEF) has urged members of the National Assembly from the Niger Delta region to reject the proposed Water Resources Bill which has been generating concern from across the country.
The appeal followed the resolution of the House of Representatives at its last plenary to take a second look at the bill with a view to fine-tuning it for general acceptability.
In a press statement issued yesterday, by its Secretary, Pastor Efiye Bribena, the forum described the bill as “the most audacious land grab scheme ever envisioned in human history,” declaring, “it is obnoxious, provocative and evil.”
It reads in part: “It is with all sense of responsibility that the Ijaw Elders Forum categorically states its denunciation and rejection of the Water Resources bill that is designed to seize the waterways and ancestral lands of the Ijaw people by the force of an evil, draconian and provocative law.
“It is in the light of the forgoing that we call on all political officeholders, legislators and people of the Niger Delta to reject the bill in its entirety. Every littoral community with riparian rights in Nigeria should publicly denounce and reject the bill in its totality.”
While calling on the international community to prevail on the Federal Government to rescind its decision on the bill, IEF warned of the dire consequences of its forceful implementation against the wish of the people.
“We sincerely hope that nobody will test the will of the Ijaw nation to forcefully resist any attempt to deny us our fundamental human rights as indigenous people to own land and natural resources as enshrined in the Nigerian Constitution and African Charter on Human and People’s Rights,” IEF added.
