By Kelechi Esogwa-Amadi
An Ijaw activist, Dr Sokari Soberekon, has called on the Federal Government to administer stiffer punishment on the police officers who invaded and ransacked the house of the Ijaw leader, Edwin Clark last week.
According to him, the act was not only humiliating to Chief Clark but also an insult to the Ijaw people.
Dr Soberekon, who spoke to newsmen on Sunday (yesterday) shortly after service in his Church in Port Harcourt, wondered why a man of Clerk’s caliber who represents the entire Ijaw people, should be brought so low.
Soberekon, who in 1981 made the 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.
He, however, urged the Nigerian Police Force to tender an unreserved apology to the entire Niger Delta people over the action of its officers that raided the house of their Leader.
The activist who is also a 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 legalise 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 added 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 further urged the people of Niger Delta, particularly the youths, to be peaceful, adding: “God resists the proud that involves in violence.”
