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By Kelechi Esogwa-Amadi
Following the recent invasion and ransacking of the house of Ijaw Leader, Chief Edwin Clark, an Ijaw activist, Dr Sokari Soberekon, has called on the Federal Government to administer stiffer punishment on the police officers who carried out the act, especially the leader of the team.
According to him, the act was not only humiliating to Chief Clark but also an insult to the Ijaw Nation.
Dr Soberekon, who spoke to newsmen on Sunday shortly after service in his church in Port Harcourt, wondered why a man of Clark’s caliber, who represents the entire Ijaw Nation, should be brought so low.
Soberekon, who in 1981 made then President Shehu Shagari to approve the Oil Derivation Fund for the oil producing communities of the Niger Delta, maintained that the region and her people should be treated with respect, care, love and dignity, having contributed so much to the Nigerian economy.
Dr Soberekon, who is addressed as Senior Advocate of the Niger Delta by those who admire his years of advocacy for the rights of Niger Deltans, thanked the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, for the disciplinary measures taken so far against the erring officers.
He, however, urged the Nigerian Police Force to tender an unreserved apology to the entire Niger Delta people and the Ijaw Nation over the action of its officers that raided the house of their Leader, Chief Edwin Clark.
The Senior Advocate of the Niger Delta also called on the military officers operating in Rivers State to leave the women selling locally refined fuel alone.
He noted that the women were only struggling to survive in a region that had been subjected to suffering despite producing the resources sustaining the nation’s economy.
He advised the Federal Government to legalize the local refining of crude oil and begin to allocate crude oil to the local refiners, adding: “Although there is a Federal Livestock Department, yet private individuals are allowed to rear cows from the nation’s forests.”
He also recalled that Indians were once banned by their British Colonialists from producing salt, yet they persevered and today, they are the largest exporters of salt in the world, just as the British Colonial Government once banned Nigerians from brewing local gin, known as Kaikai in local parlance, until it was legalized by the Yakubu Gowon Military Regime.
Sokari called on the people of Niger Delta, especially the youths, to be peaceful, adding: “God resists the proud that involves in violence.”
