Comrade Sheriff Mulade, an environmental activist, yesterday stated that infrastructural decay and high rate of poverty in the oil rich Niger Delta region of Nigeria was as a result of bad leadership.
Muldae who made this known during an interactive session with journalists in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, drew the Federal government’s attention to economic, environmental, communal and leadership crises rocking the region, which, according to him, have thrown the Niger Delta into a web of conflicting interests.
He urged government to consider the setting up of a sustainable and comprehensive social welfare programme that will change the attitude of a selected few who took advantage of the crises in the region to enrich themselves and build empires across the region in the name of fighting for the region’s development.
Comrade Mulade insisted that the Niger Delta people are no longer interested in arms struggle to agitate for the development of the region, saying that “we can no longer put up with individuals masquerading as those agitating for the development of the region”.
The environmentalist called for an end to developmental setbacks that political, traditional and religious leaders in the region are feasting on. He said “they are the major problems of development in the region, sowing the seeds of selfishness, ethnicity and hatred among the people, in addition to the region’s development resources being embezzled by political and other leaders”.
