Photo: NYSC

Segun James

The Ijaw Youths Council (IYC) has asked the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), the Nigeria Law School and the armed forces to immediately stop  the further deployment of Ijaw youths to the northern part of the country.

The IYC at a press briefing yesterday, expressed anger over what it called "senseless killings" of Nigerians and Ijaw indigenes residing in the northern part of the country by members of Boko Haram, saying the people can no longer be used as cannon fodder in the insurgency taking place in the North.

The spokesman of the IYC, Mr. Eric Omare, while briefing journalists in Yenagoa at the end of the National Executive Council (NEC), said the poor security situation in the northern part of the country and the gruesome killings of innocent Nigerians including persons of Ijaw extraction is becoming unbearable and provocative.

According to him, while military men from the North posted to Niger Delta region under the Joint Military Task Force (JTF), Operation Pulo Shield are enjoying themselves  in the creeks and benefitting from oil and gas operations in the region, their counterparts posted from Niger Delta to the northern states are being slaughtered senselessly by a sect he insisted was being sponsored by northern politicians who want to wrest power from President Goodluck Jonathan.

"The IYC leadership met, and after careful review of the situation in the northern part of the country, resolved that the board of the NYSC should stop henceforth the posting of Ijaw people to the North. No Ijaw graduate should be posted to any part of northern part of Nigeria."

"Also the Nigerian Council on Legal Education should not post any Ijaw youth to the Nigerian Law School in Kano and Adamawa. Ijaw people in the Nigerian Army, Customs and other services should no longer be posted to northern Nigeria.

"We will not accept situations where they post their people to the creeks of the Niger Delta to be enjoying oil money while they post our people to the North to be killed by Boko Haram. If the northern political leadership, because of power, want to kill the entire North let them kill themselves but our people should not be escapegoats in their killing."

Omare announced that after a careful deliberations on the rising insecurity, wanton killings of innocent Nigerians and Ijaws in the northern states, the leadership of the IYC has decided to make the call.

He also decried the barbaric action and the attempt to molest a Niger Deltan delegate, Annkio Briggs, at the National Conference by a northern delegate for agitating  for resources control, stressing that like any right thinking Niger Deltan their demand for 100 per cent  derivation where the oil producing areas would pay tax to the federal government was non-negotiable.


Source: This Day