SENATOR-ELECT for Borno-South Senatorial District, Mohammed Ali Ndume, has urged the Federal Government to expedite action on oil prospecting activities in the Lake Chad Basin in order to restore peace and curb youth restiveness in the North-East states, comprising Borno, Yobe, Bauchi, Adamawa, Gombe and Taraba.
Ethno-religious conflicts have claimed over 2,500 lives in the sub-region between 2009 and 2011.
Ndume made the call at the weekend in Maiduguri during a media chat on how insecurity to lives and property, poverty and unemployment could be addressed in the sub-region where serial attacks and killings by suspected Boko Haram sect members are rife.
However, the senator-elect attributed the increasing insecurity to lives and property in the North-East to a “lack of political will by the leaders of the sub-region to address poverty, unemployment and insecurity”.
Ndume said: “The North-East is seen as a parasite in the scheme of things in Nigeria even though we are equally blessed with untapped human and natural resources, including oil in the Lake Chad Basin.
“Oil has been found on the other side of the Lake Chad (Chad, Niger, Cameroun) and it will be unthinkable to say the commodity is not available on our own side…There are indications that at worst, gas will be drilled in commercial quantity if the desired attention is given to the project, which commenced decades ago”.
Ndume said he and other members of the National Assembly from the sub-region would vigorously pursue the optimisation of the Lake Chad for irrigation farming, fishing, livestock production and other economic activities.
He added: “These days, the North is always on the front pages of newspapers and we are being portrayed as an unstable region. We have to do what we can to reverse the negative image by addressing inequality among our diverse peoples and imbibe the spirit of peaceful coexistence among the various ethnic and religious groups”.
Read the original here:
‘Oil find’ will douse crises in Borno, others’