An Elder Statesman, and member of the Bayelsa Elders Forum and Chairman of the Nembe- Se Divisional Chief’s Council, Senator Nimi Barigha-Amange has decried the comments credited to the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management, and Social Development, Hajiya Sadiya Farouq on the flood disaster Bayelsa State.
Sadiya Farouq at the 56th session of the State House Press Briefing in Abuja by the Presidential Communication Team said that Bayelsa was not among the 10 worst hit States by the flood disaster in the Federation.
The statement of the Minister has since attracted widespread condemnation by well-meaning individuals, the Bayelsa State government and stakeholders in the South South region of the country.
Reacting to the controversial statement, the Elder Statesman described the Minister’s statement as an aberration, lacking the ice of truth, reality, wicked, unfriendly, politically immature, and insincere to the plights of the Niger Delta people especially those in Bayelsa State.
Senator Nimi Barigha-Amange said he was not only disappointed in the Minister but was further shocked with Sadiya Farouq’s comparison between Bayelsa and listing of Jigawa States as worst hit during the 2022 flood disaster.
The elderstatesman, therefore, called on the Presidency to immediately caution the Zamfara born Minister and call her to retract her statement pointing out that her unguided statements and actions remains inhuman.
He added that her utterances are capable of causing disastisfaction between the electorate and the APC in the State especially as election draws closer.
The APC Chieftain wondered how the same Minister in her October 2022 report recorded that: “Bayelsa had 58 deaths, 81 injured persons, over 24 thousand affected persons and 26,509 damaged home by the flood disaster” before making a U- turn in her actions.
Nimi Barigha-Amange queried the Minister, stressing that she erected over 44 temporary shelters in 22 States affected by the flood disaster but deliberately excluded Bayelsa State in the distribution of relief materials according to her records.
Nimi Barigha-Amange further wondered that Jigawa State was never cut off from it’s neighbouring States of Yobe, Bauchi, Kano and Katsina, unlike Bayelsa State that passed through difficulty to receive items as a result of the road calamity along the Ahoada to Patani, Ugheli axis of the East- West road, which is completely overwhelmed by the flood disaster.
According to the Senator, a liter of petrol is sold at above N400, as against the stipulated price which even rose to N1000, per liter at the peak of the flood.
He added that food items and other services have skyrocketed from N1,000, for a bucket of the popular stable food( garri) to N2,500, among other items.
He challenged the Minister to personally visit Bayelsa internally displaced persons ( IDP) camps as well as tour the State with a canoe to get first hand information before berating the woos of the masses by making unwarranted statement and hate speech against the Niger Delta people.
According to him, the Minister’s statement is capable of infuriating the people against the peace loving President Muhammadu Buhari and the All Progressives Congress (APC), and the Federal Government.