Pan Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF) has warned Northern youths not to provoke a crisis in the Niger Delta region, with unnecessary and misguided expressions and actions. In a statement signed by spokesperson Ken Robinson, the Niger-Delta group said the warning was “necessitated by reports that purported northern youths, under a so-called Amalgamated Arewa Youth Groups, demanded the termination of a reported pipeline surveillance contract awarded to a son of the Niger Delta region, High Chief Government Ekpemupolo (popularly known as Tompolo), during a protest at the headquarters of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited in Abuja. “PANDEF cautions that the reported threat by the so-called Amalgamated Arewa Youth Groups to paralyse activities at NNPC headquarters, if the said contract awarded to Government Ekpemupolo was not revoked is not only absurd and delusional but capable of sparking severe consequences in the Niger Delta region. “We are sending a serious warning to those misguided Arewa youths and their sponsors. Let it be known to them that the Niger Delta people will not tolerate such absurdity. “Tompolo, and indeed any other capable Son or Daughter of the Niger Delta, for that matter, has the right to be awarded any contract by, any agency or company, of the Federal Government, more so the NNPC Limited, whose core operations are carried out mainly in the Niger Delta region. “Nigeria is reportedly losing billions of naira daily through organized, outrageous crude theft by criminals and corrupt officials, it, thus, won’t be inapposite to infer that the so-called Amalgamated Arewa Youth Groups were mobilized by the “organized oil thieves” to impede the renewed efforts of NNPC limited, to mitigate the stealing of our crude oil, and also, safeguard the nation’s oil and gas assets. “PANDEF notes that the Niger Delta region has continued to suffer marginalisation and isolation in critical sectors of the country, especially in the oil and gas sector. “While our people are denied adequate participation in, both the management and operations, of the oil and gas industry, including the Ownership of Oil Blocks and Marginal Fields, the sad reality is that people from other parts of the country, some of who do not even know what crude oil looks like but for what they see in pictures, own the bulk of oil marginal fields and blocks. “PANDEF further notes that whereas the Petroleum Industry Act provided a paltry 3% of the settlor’s operational cost for the Host Communities Development Trust Fund, it brazenly appropriated a humongous 30% of NNPC’s oil and gas profit for a nebulous Frontier Oil Exploration Fund. “The composition of the board and management of the new NNPC Limited is another irksome matter it is the same old narrative of inequity and lopsidedness. The South-South geopolitical zone that accounts for over 80 per cent of the nation’s crude oil production and which should be bonafide shareholders has only one member on the Board. Meanwhile, oil and gas exploration activities have continued to degrade our hitherto luxuriant, healthy ecosystem, and ravage the indigenous people’s means of livelihood. “Critical infrastructural projects in the region have also continued to either suffer neglect or total abandonment. “Given such an unpleasant background in the Niger Delta, the reported protest by the said Arewa Youths over the surveillance contract awarded to High Chief Government Ekpemupolo is most insolent and annoying. “The fact that the Niger Delta people have been calm, despite the cruel injustice being meted out against them, does not mean that the people do not know what to do or lack the will to do it. “PANDEF advises the Federal Government, and the management of the titular NNPC limited, to ignore the shenanigans of the purported Arewa youth groups. THE NIGER DELTA SHOULD NOT BE PROVOKED ANY FURTHER! ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!!”

  Charles Quaker Dokubo is dead. Dokubo reportedly died on Wednesday evening after a brief illness. Dokubo was born in Abonnema, Akuku Toru Local government of Rivers state on the 23rd of March 1952. His primary and Secondary School education were all in Abonnema.   He did his ‘A’ levels at Huddersfield Technical College in West Yorkshire. From 1978-1980, Dokubo was admitted to the University of Teesside at Middlesbrough, where he undertook a course in modern History and politics and was awarded a BA [Hons]. At the University of Bradford. He completed his Masters Degree in Peace Studies, before continuing his doctoral degree in Nuclear Weapon Proliferation and its control. In 1985, he was awarded his doctoral degree in the same University of Bradford. He was later appointed a temporary lecturer in the department before proceeding to Nigeria in 1993. He was a Research Professor at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs in Lagos.

THE Indigenous People of Biafra, IPoB, yesterday, urged Ndigbo to emulate their ancestors and start burying their loved dead ones within three days, saying that the act of keeping them for so long is bringing negative circumstances against the Igbo people. IPoB said that since Ndigbo started keeping the remains of their loved ones for so long, an act their ancestors are not happy about, a lot of negative things, ordinarily not happening in Igboland, are now happening because their ancestors are angry and have abandoned them to their fate.   A statement by IPoB’s Media and Publicity Secretary, Emma Powerful, said that “the recent habit of keeping dead bodies for more than three days and even months and years in the mortuary, has had dire effects on our land and contributed to the spiritual weakness of Igbo Nation, and of the entire Biafraland. Moral decadence and all manner of evil are now taking root in our land.” IPoB’s statement further read: “The global movement and noble family of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPoB, under the command and leadership of Mazi Nnamdi Okwuchukwu Kanu, wishes to announce and call on all Biafrans, friends of Biafra and lovers of Biafra freedom, that it is high time Biafrans started burying our dead within three days as it was in ancient times.   “IPoB has gone too deep in the spirituals and found out that keeping our dead ones for so long is contributing to the major problems of Ndigbo in this present times. Our ancestors were burying their dead ones within three days and that is our culture and it helped our ancestors spiritually. “The Igbo have a very rich and spiritually-based culture which our ancestors maintained from the beginning of time. The present habit of keeping dead bodies for more than three days and even months and years in the mortuary has had dire effects on our land and contributed to the spiritual weakness of the Igbo Nation and of the entire Biafra land. Moral decadence and all manner of evil have taken root in our land. “Now that IPoB has come to realise that this alien practice of keeping the dead on land rather than committed to mother earth is having a very negative impact on our people and upon our land, it has, therefore, become very imperative to urge our people to revert to the old practice that have a very positive effect on our wellbeing, both spiritually and otherwise. According to the pro-Biafra group, “After some thorough investigation, we have realized that all the reasons given by our people which cause the unnecessary delay in burying our dead within a short period are neither cogent nor important enough.”

  The National Chairman of All Progressives Grand Alliance, Victor Oye, has called on all party members in Nigeria and Diaspora to pray fervently for the Anambra State House of Assembly for God’s mercy to stem the hand of death that has struck the House killing two of its members in a space of three months. The PUNCH had reported on Wednesday that the House Majority Leader, Nnamdi Okafor, died at a legislative retreat in South Africa. The lawmaker slumped and died in the early hours of Wednesday in a Hotel in Sandton City, Johannesburg, South Africa, and was confirmed dead hours later. Before his death, Okafor, popularly called Akajiugo Awka, represented the Awka South Constituency 1 in the state Assembly. In a press statement on Thursday, Dr. Oye urged all members to embark on three-day fasting and prayer for peace, growth and development in the House and in the party ahead of the 2023 elections. “The times in which we have found ourselves are perilous and call for constant prayer, self-examination and penance”, the statement quoted Oye as saying. He called on the leadership of the Anambra State House of Assembly to join in the prayer and fasting as “I see God doing something new in the House soon.” He used the opportunity to commiserate with the Anambra State Governor, Prof. Charles Soludo, the Speaker of the House, Rt. Hon. Uche Okafor and the, indeed, all the members of the House on the sudden death of the Majority Leader, Hon. Nnamdi Okafor, in faraway South Africa. He prayed God to grant the soul of the deceased eternal repose in heaven