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| PHOTONEWS: Delta Youths Protest, Disrupt Okowa's Anti-Corruption Summit |
Placard-carrying youth demonstrators in Delta State on Wednesday disrupted an anti-corruption conference organized by Governor Ifeanyi Okowa. Our correspondent reported that the conference, tagged Anti-Corruption Summit, was mid-way at Grand Hotels, Asaba when the demonstrators, who claimed to be members of the youth wing of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), showed up. The youths said they were aggrieved that Governor Okowa had failed to pay them for “a political job” he had hired them to do last week.
According to the protesters, who called themselves PDP Faithful Youths, Mr. Okowa had recruited them last week to disrupt a stakeholders meeting by the Ali Modu Sherriff's faction of the PDP at Grand Hotel in Asaba. They said no payment had been made to them for that “political job.”
Speaking to reporters at the venue of the anti-corruption summit, the leader of the protesting youths, Clifford Osiayan, explained that their action was to draw attention to the fact that Governor Okowa had failed to pay them for a job they carried out for him. He added the governor had hired them to disrupt the Sheriff-led PDP stakeholders meeting at the Grand Hotel, and that they had perfectly executed the task but received no payment.
"Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa does not keep to promises. After using the youths to do all sorts of jobs, he disappears into thin air. He will make all sorts of promises from empowerment to cash, which he doesn’t honor. If we don't cry out we don't get our pay hence we are coming out to cry today,” said Mr. Osiayan.
Some of the protesters’ placards read, “Pay us our money,” “We have worked for the party,” “Give us our appointment letters,” “Please pay us, we have worked for PDP,” “Please keep your promise, Governor Okowa”. The demonstrators said Mr. Okowa and other party leaders always used them to foment trouble, but dumped them after each assignment.
“We were the ones they called upon to chase out Senator Ali Modu Sheriff and Dr. Cairo Ojougboh from the Grand Hotel last week during their stakeholders meeting,” one of the demonstrators said.
Several protesters stated that they travel around with party leaders to locations where their “services” were needed, adding that, when it comes time for them to be empowered or to receive appointments and other enumerations, they are side-lined.
The Secretary to State Government (SSG), Festus Ovie Agas, tried to calm down the youths, but the protesters rebuffed his efforts. Instead, the youths’ leader, Mr. Osiayan, demanded that the SSG go into Grand Hotel and fetch Governor Okowa to personally address them or they would not leave the venue of the summit.
Meanwhile, some civil servants in the state have described Governor Okowa’s anti-corruption summit as laughable, with one source asserting that the governor was not morally fit to spend taxpayers’ funds on such a summit when he personified corruption.
“His Excellency Governor Okowa awards all juicy contracts to himself using cronies, kinsmen and associates as fronts. Okowa is corruption himself. As such he is not fit morally to sponsor the summit. Okowa is only trying to blindfold the EFCC [Economic and Financial Crimes Commission] and the people of Delta State when corruption is his first name. At the appropriate time Okowa shall give account of what he has done with the finances of the state. He will tell us where all the DESOPADEC [Delta State Oil Producing Areas’ Development Commission] billions of naira went,” said a civil servant who works for the Delta State Ministry of Finance.
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BY SAHARA REPORTERS
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