Ijaw Youth Council tells Buhari it is unacceptable that Zamfara gold is local while Niger Delta oil is national

IJAW youths have called ion President Muhammadu Buhari to immediately alter Nigeria's constitution and allow states to harness and control the resources in their domains in response to recent revelations that Zamfara State is mining and exporting gold.

Since President Buhari assumed office in 2015, calls for the restructuring of the federation have grown louder, with most people wanting the country to return to the 1958 formula agreed at independence when the federating units were allowed to control the resources within their domains. Nowhere have the calls been more strident than in the oil-producing Niger Delta, where the federal government controls the petroleum resources, instead of the states.

Since the beginning of this year, however, it has emerged that Zamfara State in Nigeria's far northwest has been mining and exporting gold reserves. From all indications, it appears that the state government has been given a free hand to mine and sell the gold as it deems fit, without the federal government even get a share of royalties.

Incensed by what it sees as a grave injustice, the Ijaw Youth Council (IYC) has urged President Buhari and the National Assembly to, as a matter of national importance, initiate constitutional amendments. While stressing that this is the only path to peace in Nigeria, the IYC warned that anything short of resource control will be disastrous to the economic survival of the nation.

IYC leader Pereotubo  Oweilaemi, said: “Niger Delta people will control her resources even if it means to be killed by the trigger-happy and the Niger Deltaphobe military Joint Task Force in the region. If Nigerian laws did not mean anything to the illegal miners of solid minerals in the north then Niger Delta people will also take control of all petroleum resources in the southern region notwithstanding, the constitutional provisions.

“Niger Delta oil cannot be subjected to family ownership to Nigeria, while solid minerals in the north are being extracted as individual ownership. It’s either the government restructures the country by allowing states to harness and control the resources in their domains or we will take every steps necessary to exercise control of the resources in our fatherland.

“Despite the fact that illegal mining activities are causing a bloody crisis in the north, the federal government has not deemed it necessary to set up a military joint task force to checkmate the illegal mining activities because the solid minerals in the country are seen as private ownership to the feudal lords. There cannot be one Nigeria if everybody in the country is not treated with the same measure.

“Everyday people have been killed and property worth billions of naira have been destroyed in the name of illegal oil bunkering activities by the marauding Joint Task Force in the Niger Delta region. The federal government chose to protect the oil facilities at the expense of the oil-bearing communities because crude oil is seen as a national property, while solid minerals in the north belongs to the individual persons. Is this the one Nigeria they are preaching?”