By Emmanuel Aziken
Posted to the Web: Thursday, July 28, 2005

Responding to the President’s address to the joint session of the National Assembly on Tuesday, the South-South Delegates Forum said their track of consistency and courage was enough to show the zone’s selfless efforts.

Chief Mike Ozkekhome, Chairman of the South-South Delegates Forum Publicity Committee spoke on behalf of the delegates at a press briefing in Abuja.

President Obasanjo had in his address accused some delegates who walked out of the conference of being manipulated by unknown forces for strategic reasons.

"I think by now we have made it very clear that we are not the kind of people you can manipulate. We have shown courage, we have shown bravado, dogged bravado, we have shown consistency, we have shown patriotism and such people cannot be manipulated. No way. Rather, what we fought against was tyranny of the majority. That was what we fought against.

"Let it be on record that the chairman of the conference did himself admit that he made a mistake in the handling of the issue and that he was misled in handling the issue and that it was based on facts available to him then that all delegates had agreed by way of consensus to the decisions of the elders committee. So, if the chairman could admit that he made a mistake but based on available information, the question would be why wouldn’t the leadership then seek to correct that mistake by going back to the plenary session to correct it?

"So, we were not manipulated by anybody. The chairman’s statement showed that the step we took was the best option opened to us at that stage. So, Mr. President, humbly would be faulted along that line. Nobody manipulated us. The goals he sought were clear which he gave to us on the 21st of February 2005 when he inaugurated this conference and the goals were clear: to restructure Nigeria, to refine, to refocus, to redesign and to reassess Nigeria. In summary, that means restructuring Nigeria," he said.Affirming the logic of resource control as a panacea to the nation’s problems, he said: "Resource control and equitable derivation principle that we are fighting for are the best restructuring that you can do for Nigeria today because they will make all Nigerians go back to the land. They will unleash the bottled up potentials. They will lead all Nigerians back to begin to exploit and explore the vast mineral resources that abound in every state in this country.

"Up till January 1966, the per capita income of Nigeria was $2,000 per head, (but) today in spite of the oil boom, it is $200 per head. Meaning that there is no creativity again on the part of all Nigerians," he said.