Admin l Thursday, August 02, 2018
EFFURUN, Delta, Nigeria – The President General of the Urhobo Progress Union Worldwide, UPU, Olorogun Moses Taiga, has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to quickly intervene in the issue of underfunding of the Federal University of Petroleum Resources, adding that any considerations for including the financial needs of FUPRE in a supplementary budget will be most welcome and appreciated by the Urhobo people.
Taiga also decried the situation where Urhobos play peripheral roles in the oil industryC despite being one of the major contributors to Nigeria’s oil wealth and the largest onshore producer of Oil and Gas in the Nation.
“It is distressing that no Urhobo person owns a marginal field, or has been appointed into the Board of NNPC. We ask the President to use his good offices in appointing an Urhobo man to the Board of NNPC, as well as allocating marginal fields to competent Urhobo oil businessmen,” he further urged.
In the same vein, he called on the President to help facilitate the restructuring of the Nigerian federation. “What the Urhobo Nation, like the rest of the South South, is asking for is restructuring, politically and economically to have a true federation. I stand with PANDEF on the implementation of the 16-point demand of the Niger Delta people, which was presented to President Buhari in 2016. We also told President Buhari this much when he granted audience to the Urhobo Progress Union and Urhobo Traditional Rulers last month. The Urhobo people have on their own prepared a paper titled ‘Urhobo Positon on Restructuring Nigeria’ on this subject,” he said.
Also, he asked that leaders of Urhobo should be closely consulted on any bill that will affect the waterways flowing through Urhoboland. We ask that the President and Parliament should note our interest in this matter.
He also spoke on the unused land donated to the military at Uvwie Okpe and Oghara Kingdoms: “We urge that any unused land should be returned to the Community which donated it to the Armed Forces. We await the immediate intervention of the President in this matter; as he promised us last month, at the Villa visit.”
The UPU is the Urhobo Nation’s principal cultural body founded in 1931 to meet the development needs of the Urhobo people, who represent the fourth (4th) largest ethnic nationality of Nigeria. The Urhobo Progress Union is arguably the oldest socio-cultural organization in Nigeria. It has spearheaded the campaign for the progress of the Urhobo people from British Colonial Times to the present time, including the founding of the famous Urhobo College, Effurun, in 1948. That campaign for progress has continued to the present time as my administration of the UPU strives to build an Urhobo University and introduce a micro-finance bank into Urhoboland.
