Niger Delta chieftain, Chief Edwin Clark has attacked former President Olusegun Obasanjo over his perceived hatred for the oil-rich region.
Clark, who was reacting to a recent outburst by Obasanjo in Abuja, where he attacked the National Secretary of the Ijaw National Congress, Ebipamowei Wodu, at a peace and security parley convened by the Global Peace Foundation and Vision Africa, described the former president’s speech at the summit as disappointing.
In a viral video that emerged from the meeting, the former president was seen tackling Wodu for saying the Ijaw were being treated like second class citizens in Nigeria despite producing the oil and gas resources that had sustained the country.
Clark, in an open letter, attacked Obasanjo over his outburst towards a fellow participant in a summit to which everyone present was invited
“Your outburst, to say the least, disappointing, when you displayed a hate attitude against the people of the oil-producing states in Nigeria. You openly interjected both Wodu and Mr O’Mac Emakpore each time they tried to speak.
“Natural resources found in regions were controlled by the people of the regions in the country as enunciated in Section 140 of the 1960 Constitution,” he said in the letter obtained by The Punch.
Clark stated that as a former military Head of State of Nigeria and later a democratically elected President of the country, he was certain that Obasanjo knew that the principle of derivation had always been top on the agenda of national discourse before and after the country’s independence.
He said Obasanjo needed to be reminded that it was the practice of the principle of derivation that enabled the Western Region, then under Chief Obafemi Awolowo; and the Northern Region, then under Sir Ahmadu Bello, to reap all the money that enabled them to develop far ahead of the then Eastern Region.
Clark added that from the benefits of the practice of derivation principle, the Western Region introduced free education, built universities, the first television station in Africa, among other economic and social infrastructure, including hiring at the time, an Israeli company, Soleh Bonel, to develop roads and other infrastructure.
He said Obasanjo’s argument that natural resources were free because they are placed by God on earth held no water, as this would definitely mean chaos and anarchy, as anybody in any part of the world could enter into any land, including his Ota Farm, to undertake any activity that they desired to do.
