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NDCSC Condemns “Ethnicizing” Subsidy Removal Issue; Calls On Jonathan To Listen To Voice of Citizens

January 16, 2012

The Niger Delta Civil Society Coalition (NDCSC) has reiterated its full support of the critical civil society organizations in the region,  to the ongoing struggle to assure quality democracy and good governance in the country. 

The Niger Delta Civil Society Coalition (NDCSC) has reiterated its full support of the critical civil society organizations in the region,  to the ongoing struggle to assure quality democracy and good governance in the country. 

In a statement signed by its chair, Anyakwee Nsirimovu, NDCSC said it was shocked at various advertisement  placements,  news conferences, communiqués, and inflammatory  verbal  threats emanating from  some  interest groups  and individuals from the Niger Delta region, in their apparent illogical  quest to justify  President Jonathan administration’s  insensitive removal of oil subsidy, or better still, the arbitrarily imposition of  multiple taxation on poverty on unsuspecting  ordinary Nigerians. 

“Without  prejudice to their fundamental rights to free speech, assembly and association, we wish to make it absolutely clear to all change agents in the field of protests across Nigeria, and indeed, Nigerians in general, that such vituperations as expressed, and all attempt to sectionalize the genuine and most justified protests on the removal of oil subsidy, does not in any manner whatsoever, represent the views of critical civil society organisations and the ordinary peoples of the region,” it said. 

NDCSC condemned all attempts or guises to reduce or justify ineptitude, bad governance, unparalleed levels of corruption and tolerance for  inequalities and poverty by any group or persons in the region or outside of it, describing it as “most  perverse and uncivilized.”
 
It warned that the poor and degraded peoples and communities of the Niger Delta region stand to lose more under an aribitrary subsidy removal  regime, “under an administration that is yet to show signs of delivering  sustainable infrastructural development, rather than charity, for a people who went into a low intensity warfare without any constructive gains nor just peace to show for it, inspite of their added votes for President Jonathan.”

It also called on President Jonathan to openly distance  himself  from the ethnic jingoists’ become become mindful of governors who are merely looking for more money to loot, and advisers and ministers who begin their day worrying about inflation statistics, not poverty  and unemployment statistics, and to listen to the voices of his citizens.

“A President who consistently said that his election was not worth a drop of any human blood, must stop the maiming and slaughtering of innocent and law abiding protesting Nigerians in the name of his unacceptable policy design,” the group warned.


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