By Charles Igbo
All eyes will be on the South-south of Nigeria as the Zone meets on Friday, (today), to take a firm stand on how, and why, it should control its God-given natural resource – Oil and Gas.
To attend the meeting are all its six State Governors, National and State Assembly members, Ministers Elder statesmen, and other Stakeholders from the Zone.
The meeting is the aftermath of the decision of the Federal Government to allow Zamfara state to be in-charge of its Gold.
The State had, recently, mined, and sold a Bar of Gold to the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, for a whopping sum of N5billion. It kept the huge amount in its coffers, instead of remitting it to the Federal coffers. The action attracted no raised eyebrows from the Federal Government.
But it has attracted shock and condemnation from a cross section of Nigerians, especially the South-south and, at least, one strongly worded Editorial from a high profile National newspaper.
Deputy President of the Senate, Ovie Omo-Agege, and Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike, were among the first to condemn the Zamfara issue.
The question on the lips of all those who condemned it is: Why would Zamfara State control its Gold, and South-south not control its Oil and Gas?
The Federal Government has not offered any concrete reason or explanation, instead, it, along with the CBN, celebrated Zamfara’s feat.
On Thursday, while addressing the Media in Asaba, Delta State Governor, Dr Ifeanyi Okowa, disclosed that the South-south would meet in Porthacourt on Friday, to decide the fate of the Federal Government’s continous control of the Oil and Gas deposited in the Zone. The thorny issue to be deliberated upon, strongly, according to Okowo is: Why the South-south should not take a firm control of its Oil and Gas, when Zamfara is controlling its Gold? Okowa described Zamfara’s control of its Gold as unlawful.
Okowa: “South- south Governors, before now, have been talking about the need for restructuring and need for resource control. Obviously we are on that because we feel there is the need to restructure not only the country, but the management of resources.
“But as at today, there are acts in the National Assembly that guide the issue of oil production and with the solid minerals, those are not covered in these acts, and obviously, this is already a sore point in our nation’s governance system and we hope to express this very strongly during the meeting taking place in Port Hacourt on Friday.
“We cannot apply laws in our nation to the point that it becomes discriminatory because if people are allowed to process for their solid minerals, they should also be allowed to do the same for their oil. So, we are going to be very hard, and try to make our voices as strong as possible during the meeting.
“I believe that at some point in time, these discriminatory tendencies will have to be revisited in our nation at some point in time.”
The opinion in the South-south, supported by a couple of other zones, is that the FG cannot allow Zamfara State to control National assets, while the same FG controls that of the South-south.
All eyes and ears will be focussed on Porthacourt for the outcome of the meeting, which Okowa has said will be strong.
