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Cracks in the South-South
…SSPA is a ruse - UND
By Augustine Avwode
Less
than two weeks after the South-South Peoples Assembly (SSPA) came out with the
epoch-making ‘Calabar Declaration’, which organisers said would
henceforth serve as a zonal charter, it seems the envisaged unity in the zone
still remains a mirage. Signals to this crack emerged as the Union of Niger
Delta (UND) headed by Second Republic Senator, David Dafinone, declared the
SSPA and all it stands for as a ruse.
Speaking
to Sunday Independent in an exclusive interview on Friday in Lagos, UND’s National
Coordinator, Kingsley Agbontaen, said the Union does not agree with SSPA
because the motives behind its activities were not backed by sincerity.
“UND
reserves the right to alert our people in the Niger Delta that they should not
be carried away by the activities of any group that is not backed by sincerity
or the betterment of the South-South”, he said Agbontean argued that
though some of the points raised in the Calabar Declaration were germane, he
nevertheless insisted that the sole agenda of the SSPA was the issue of
South-South and 2007 Presidency.
“SSPA’s
sole agenda is the issue of South-South and the 2007 Presidency, no other
thing. If other things were mentioned, they were just embellishments or
decorative ornaments. And if that be the case, it is clear that promoters of
SSPA are not sincere for various reasons”.
The
UND’s argument, according to Agbontaen, includes what he called PDP
invasion of SSPA. He insisted that almost all the promoters of the SSPA are
card-carrying members of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party. And that the PDP
may not, in a polity that is deeply entrenched in zoning of relevant offices,
consider the zone, given the kind of awareness the North and the South-East
have created.
According
to the group, what was of more importance was the issue of restructuring the
nation and polity without which all efforts at 2007 would amount to putting the
cart before the horse.
“We
would like to make it clear that the issue of restructuring is the most
important issue through a Sovereign National Conference, because as it is
today, the President holds all the aces; he controls all the structures and
anybody who is not in the good book of the incumbent should not hope to succeed
him. As far as the UND is concerned, nobody in the South-South is among those
the incumbent is contemplating for now,” Agbontaen submitted.
He
further argued that the fact that SSPA has no clear agenda on what he called
“strategic alliance” that would allow it to work with people of
like minds from other zones, underscores its insincerity. He added that in due
course, the UND would come out with a plan of action for the South-South zone
and indeed the whole nation.
The
South-South Peoples Assembly, a fusion of the South-South Peoples Conference of
Chief Edwin Kiagbodo Clark and South-South Consultative Assembly of Dr. Joseph
Wayas, on November 9, 2004 at a historic meeting in Calabar, Cross River State,
rolled out the Calabar Declaration at which it pledged to work for the unity of
the zone and the realisation of a South-South President in 2007 among other
things.
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