Leader of the Niger Delta Volunteer Force (NDVF), Alhaji Mujaheed Asari Dokubo, has handed down two major conditions to President Umaru Yar�Adua for sustainable peace to reign in the volatile Niger Delta region.
He wants the president to immediately convene a Sovereign National Conference (SNC) to resolve the nagging issues bedeviling the nation, and also cede the management and control of the oil sector to the Niger Delta people.
Speaking on Monday in Abuja during a visit to the Acting Inspector General of Police, Mike Okiro, at the Police Force Headquarters, Dokubo said the heightening spate of hostage-taking in the oil-rich region will not abate despite his recent release from detention by the Federal Government because it has become a lucrative business and government has not taken the right steps to curb the trend.
He said how long the NDVF and the entire Ijaw nation would wait for President Yar�Adua to fulfill his promise of doing the right thing depends on the outcome of ongoing consultations and deliberations by his people, even as he challenged the IGP to map out strategies towards curtailing the prevailing criminality in the troubled region.
Dokubo, however, raised alarm that the ranks of his members had been infiltrated by some militants with criminal motives, a situation that worsened the phenomenon of hostage-taking. He explained that he was at the police force headquarters in fulfillment of his bail condition, which required him to submit himself to the police authorities for approval if he wanted to travel outside the country, disclosing that he intended travelling to Saudi Arabia on Wednesday for medical treatment.
He regretted that the struggle, which started with the sole aim of redressing the injustice done to the people of Niger Delta, had been hijacked by some people who are more interested in materials gains.
Giving an insight into the struggle for justice in the region, Dokubo recalled that when he took over the leadership of the Ijaw Youth Congress (IYC) in 1998, he decided to give the struggle for the emancipation of the Niger Delta a focus that would help them achieve their goals by suggesting resort to the use of arms, but the move was rejected by some people, hence the resolve to form the NDVF.
He, however, regretted that hostage taking was alien to the struggle as originally conceived, stressing, �I am totally against hostage taking.�
He argued that if the hostage taking was in the interest of the people of Niger Delta, they should have discontinued after his release and that of the former governor of Bayelsa State, DSP Alameiseigha from detention, lamenting that the people behind hostage-taking were giving the people of Niger Delta a bad name.
Quoting copiously from the Holy Koran on the need to be rational in all human actions, Dokubo maintained that evil has crept into the noble cause, even as he expressed optimism that the present government would take the right steps to address the burning issues.
He, however, insisted that the solution to the problem in the Niger Delta is to explore the option a sovereign national conference and a referendum among the Ijaw nation to reach terms on the way forward.
Earlier, Mike had said that he would parade about 17 suspected hostage takers tomorrow, disclosing that some of them are not even from the Niger Delta region.