Bayelsa State elders and youths have vowed to continue their protest last Monday until the Presidency confirms the Acting Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission, Prof. Nelson Brambaifa, as the substantive boss of the agency.
The protesters took to the streets on Saturday in Yenagoa over the delay in the confirmation of Brambaifa’s appointment.
They called on President Muhammadu Buhari to immediately confirm Brambaifa, who has been in an acting capacity for four months, as the substantive managing director of the agency.
The elders, who took their protest to the Yenagoa office of the NDDC, caused a gridlock on the Mbiama-Yenagoa Expressway as motorists and commuters were stranded for hours.
The protesters said despite the campaign of calumny against the NDDC management, the agency under Brambaifa had remained focussed on its mission to actualise the vision of Buhari in the Niger Delta.
They carried placards with inscriptions such as ‘President Buhari, please confirm Prof. Nelson Brambaifa as the MD of the NDDC board’, ‘Let Prof. Brambaifa continue as MD of NDDC’, ‘Bayelsans are solidly behind you as MD of NDDC’, ‘The only person we want is Brambaifa as MD NDDC’ and ‘NDDC board is secured with Prof. Brambaifa’.
In his address, the representative of the Bayelsa Elders and former Security Adviser to the Bayelsa State Government, Perekeme Kpodoh said the NDDC had come of age and should be ready to develop the Niger Delta region.
“But we have seen that since its inception, we don’t have development and today, we have a son from Bayelsa, who is Prof. Nelson Brambaifa and four months only, he has changed the tide,” Kpodoh stated.