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Odi: Seven years after, residents tackle govt on promises
Ofonime Umanah
Sunday Punch
26 February 2006
RESIDENTS of Odi in Bayelsa State are accusing the authorities of broken promises seven years after the military invasion of their community.
They are angry that the state government was yet to keep its promise of rehabilitating the victims of that military operation despite repeated reminders.
Soldiers stormed the community in 1999, razing houses following the killing of nine of their colleagues.
They accused the Federal Government of leaving them to their fate after the military attack and raised an alarm that their community now faced extinction because of threats from flood.
However, they acknowledge the presence of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), saying it had embarked on meaningful projects in the area, including roads.
The traditional ruler of the area, otherwise called the Amananaowei of Odi, King Shine Apre, said in an interview with Sunday Punch in the community on Thursday that all the projects initiated by the state government for the people as part of the rehabilitation programme had not been completed.
For instance, he said the water project was even commissioned at the instance of a former commissioner in the state, when it was still under construction.
A former chairman of the local government, who also played a key role as a vice chairman in the Odi Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Committee, Chief Millionaire Asangba, equally the claims in a separate interview with our correspondent in the community.
The king said, although the NDDC had not been established as at the time of the invasion, it was pleasing to the Odi people that the commission embarked on major link roads in the area.
He was particularly excited that the 18-kilometre road being constructed by the commission from Odi the East-West Road, through Odi into Trofani, Delta State, would open up the community to commercial activities.
"We appreciate the effort of the NDDC but we will like them to do more. Compared to the government, the NDDC has done well for us," he said.
He commended the state government for initiating some of the projects in the community, but lamented they had all been abandoned.
"I call on the state government to quickly do things to improve the lives of the people", he said, adding that it was their desire to feel the impact of the government, including the federal authorities, whom he blamed for the current plight of the people.
He commended the state government for paying the examination fees of final year secondary school students of Odi after the invasion.
"When we asked for a generator, the state government brought it," he said. "The government has also been supporting us in the organization of the annual cultural festival."
But he added: "What we are saying is that we are talking of concrete projects. We mounted pressure on the federal government to come to our aid but nothing has been done; they asked for land, we gave it to them.
"The President is claiming that he is using NDDC to rehabilitate Odi, but we are saying no. Any day, I can challenge the President on this matter because if you go to Opokuma, there are NDDC projects. Was Opokuma burnt down?
"If you go to other places, you will see NDDC projects. Were those communities burnt down? That is why we are saying that it is only the NDDC that has helped us. This house (referring to the traditional ruler's house) was burnt down. This is a new house; we are just helping ourselves."
He pleaded with the NDDC as an agency that had been supportive of its cause to consider undertaking an embankment project for the community to save it from extinction.
http://www.earthrights.net/nigeria/news/2006-02-26.html