ETCHE PEOPLES LIBERATION CONGRESS
PRESS STATEMENT
The National Coordinating Council of Etche Peoples Libration Congress (EPLC) categorically forewarn that our patience and pertinence has been challenged by the protracted, unlawful, and unregulated commercial sand dredging conquest in Etche land. If there were no dire consequences associated with such predatory business, our group wouldn’t have bothered much, but because the damage and devastation done to our natural environment will harm and hamper the posterity of our next generation on born, hence we refuse to fold our arms and feign ignorance in this regard. The conglomerate of desperate and misguided sand mining cabals through their ill-advised exploits has inflicted fatal injury on the ecosystem, flora and fauna of our environment.
However, the curious and duplicitous quest for sand in Etche already endangered communities, dredged day in-day out has dethroned all known environmental best practices, downplayed the supervisory roles of government regulatory agencies, and about to derail our form of existence as marginalized minority oil and gas producing ethnic nationality in Nigeria. To this effect, it has become a matter of uttermost importance to the people of Etche, not just only the affected areas like Chokocho, Umuechem, Igbo, Umuebulu, Elele, Umuanyagu, Egwi, Abara, Ozuzu and Okomoko communities. The current scenario has fertilized and fermented corollary of portentous and imminent environmental disaster, and the only way to remedy this trending situation is to stop and disband all unregulated sand dredging in Etche land.
Therefore, after thorough and thoughtful evaluations, we deduced the conclusion that such unlawful sand mining is done in gross violation of the fundamental right of the indigenous people of Etche to live in healthy and safe environment as guaranteed Chapter 2, Section 20 of the Constitution of Federal Republic of Nigeria. We are fully aware that Federal Government under the visionary leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari has recently proscribed and banned unhealthy sand dredging activities in the country, and the need to abide by this executive order has become an imperative necessity.
On final note, we vociferously issue a 37days ultimatum to all categories of sand racketeers feeding large on the table of our volatile, degraded and endangered eco system to stop hence forth. In the event of refusal or failure to abide by the provisions of this ultimatum which will elapse by first week of September 2016, our group will be forced to take laws in our hands by devising anti-democratic vices to put a stop to it once and for all. From all available indications and evidences, unregulated sand dredging has already inflected and infested enough damage to our environment, source of income and social infrastructures, and we will not hesitate to save Etche from wanton destruction by sand mining entities that profit at the expense of our people.
Com (Engr) Japhet A.C Ogbueri Com all security agencies and relevant government regulatory bodies operating in Rivers State.
Signed on behalf of the congress of EPLC‘
Com (Engr) Japhet A.C Ogbueri National leader.
