By; PATRICK TITUS, Uyo
Mboho Mkparawa Ibibio, a foremost socio-cultural organisation of the Ibibio extraction in Akwa Ibom State has kicked against the contentious Water Resources Bill being championed by policy makers and the National Assembly.
Mboho said they should have focused on how to solve the myriads of problems bedeviling the country such as the ongoing strike of the Academic Staff University Union (ASUU), insecurity and devaluation of the Naira.
This position was contained in a communique jointly signed by the International President of Mboho Mkparawa, Akparawa James Edet and the General Secretary, Akparawa Bassey Bassey respectively at the end of the central working committee meeting held last week in Uyo, the Akwa Ibom State state capital.
The Water Resources Bill which is currently before the National Assembly if considered, would confer ownership, control and management of surface and underground waters on the Federal Government.
But the Mboho describing the bill as repressive and affront to the sensibilities of people in the coastal states who are the original owners of the water, urged governors in the Niger Delta region and other coastal states as well as National Assembly members irrespective of political party biases to rise against the repugnant bill.
The communique stressed that the people will fight with all peaceful and constitutional means available to ensure the bill which it described as a ploy to further impoverish them, does not see the light of the day.
The communique reads in parts, “we urge all governors and national assembly members from the Niger Delta region and other coastal states in Nigeria to rise against the proposed Water Resoures Bill being put forward for consideration at the National Assembly, irrespective of political party affiliations;
“That at a period where our students have been grounded at home for over six months due to the ASUU strike; at a time insecurity has attained monumental proportions with killings and abductions for ransom; at a time that the country’s currency, the naira, is on a free fall and at its lowest ebb ever in the history of our country; at a time enterprises are shutting down and foreign investors are leaving the country due to unbearable operational costs and poor economic policies.”
According to Mboho, “what should preoccupy policy makers in our nation should be how to channel all energy and resources towards tackling those issues and not to plunge the country into more avoidable crisis, with such a highly contentious bill which is suspected to have been put forward to serve sinister and sectional interests.”
The organisation therefore, called on other patriotic Nigerians who desire the unity and cohesion of the country to lend their voices as well in stopping the bill, saying, “injury to one is injury to all.”
