Port Harcourt — A new dimension was weekend added to the resource control agitation in the Niger Delta as Ijaws under the aegis of Ijaw Association for Oil and Gas Producing Communities (IAOGPC) demanded that hitherto, the Federal Government should give the 13 per cent now paid to states to them for direct development of their areas.

They have therefore proposed the building of Industrial Oil City of Ijaw Nationî where all oil and gas related industries in the country must have their headquarters and their men, women and children who now live in squalor would have the best of life.

Speaking at their 16 Ede Street, Ogbunabali, Port Harcourt office, its President, Mr. Yaro Tuo said the need to build the oil city was to see a thing to point to when the oil and gas which he said was exhaustible finishes and the area no longer attractive to prospectors as it is now.

According to them, apart from the demand for the 13per cent derivation which they said has not bettered the lot of their people ,they also expect the Federal Government to make further contributions towards building the city.

The Ijaws were synonymous in pointing out that the beauty of what today is Abuja, Lagos and Port Harcourt came from the squalor of their creeks where there was no pipe borne water or roads, where standard of living was at its lowest.

The industrial oil city is the drive of the Ijaw nation to have a central meeting point in order to foster unity and development among the Ijaws. The city will stand as a symbol in the history of the Ijaw that we were once oil rich and at that time, oil was the mainstay of the Nigerian economy.

It is tagged to be an industrial oil city in the sense that oil and gas are exhaustible resources, therefore the industries will stand the test of time.

While the city stands as a legacy for the next generation to come like the cocoa house in Ibadan and the groundnut pyramid in Kano. The industrial city, we hope will serve the needs of our population, raise the quality of our lives, bring tangible benefits to the vast majority, create employment, educate and secure the future of our youths and narrow elite-masses gapî, they said.

They contended that people given positions in the Oil and Minerals Producing Areas Development Commission (OMPADEC) and the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) were people outside Ijaw nation and therefore from non oil producing areas.

Apart from demanding for the payment of the derivation funds directly to them, they are calling on all oil companies in Ijaw land to renew their fees for pipes that pass through their areas as the ones paid before have all expired.

ìAll pipelines travelling through our communities have expired. We are asking for fresh payment. They have paid all other communities million of naira. Infact, nobody is marginalizing us, we are the ones marginalizing ourselves. If we have been caged by one manís policy, then we have to look for a way of freeing ourselves from that cageî, they insisted.

To prove their point, they said when Shell Development Corporation wanted to build a N15m cottage hospital in Oporoma, they allegedly awarded the contract to an Igbo man and they staged a protest which made them revoke and award it to an Ijaw man.

They described unemployment, underemployment and poor standard of living as the cause of restiveness in the Niger Delta, adding that it was wrong for them to wait for government till eternity to rescue them; hence they were ready to take up the gauntlet.

They decried the situation where none of the people of Ijaw origin are awarded oil block and demanded for the publication of the names of winners of block and called for a bill to make it mandatory for indigenes to have direct participation in oil business in the country.