Niger Delta militants, yesterday, declared all National Assembly members from the region as “enemies of development,” threatening to deal with them and blow up their properties in the region for irresponsibly consenting to the cutback of funds to key infrastructural projects for the region in the 2018 budget signed by President Muhammadu Buhari.

The militants, who met at the Benin River, Egbema in Delta State, to appraise the budgetary provisions for various projects in the region in commensuration with the wealth obtained from the region’s crude oil, lambasted the lawmakers for their purported “ineptitude, foolishness, non-committed approach and dumbness.”

They said: “To this end, the RNDA has declared all National Assembly members from the Niger Delta region as the true enemies of the development of the region and would deal decisively with them while their properties scattered across the Niger Delta region will receive a dose of our ravaging dynamites.

“We note that the National Assembly members have not been able to attract projects but would sit down and fold their hands in the Green and Red chambers and superintend over reduction of funding for key projects attracted to the development of the long-neglected region by others.

“It is shameful and abysmal failure on the part of our legislators in the National Assembly to sit down and endorse this injustice done to the people of the region when the President had already allocated funds for such projects with direct positive impact on the people.

“It is totally unacceptable in this era as it will no longer be condoned for our elected representatives to pursue their personal interest to the detriment of the region’s development as was clearly displayed by former President Goodluck Jonathan in his epileptic six years reign while under his blind watch, allowed some of his ministers and cohorts to milk the wealth of the region dry without contributing any single project to the region.

“We were totally taken aback over the reduction of funds allocated to the Nigerian Maritime University, Okerenko. This was one project that we sacrificed our lives in the creek to fight for, the second Niger bridge, the East-West road that cuts across all the Niger Delta states, which former President Jonathan and his PDP government could not complete among other critical projects by the National Assembly.” (Vanguard)

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