Senator Joseph Kennedy N Waku, (JKN Waku), the stormy petrel of the Middle Belt was elected senator for the Benue North West Constituency of Benue State, on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP in 1999. Not long after she came into national renown following his controversial call for a military coup on the claim that President Olusegun Obasanjo was derailing the democracy project. Since then he has been an unrepentant critic of President Obasanjo, and a major political figure in the North. Waku is not only a chieftain of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC but also of the Arewa Consultative Forum, ACF. In this interview, he speaks on current national issues. Excerpts:

By Joseph Erunke

What is your reaction to the renewed insurgency by militants in the Niger Delta?

In the first place, what were the offences committed by these people before they were pardoned? Are they not criminals? If I were the president, I would jail them.

So, are you ruling out dialogue as proposed by some people as a way of resolving the problem?

What kind of dialogue? Let them bring to table what they want. Let them do what they are doing, they will also suffer it. Are they also not suffering when they ruin the economy? Are they not facing the same problem like you and I? They are talking of marginalization today.
If you create Biafra today, is Biafra solidly Igbo's? It’s not. When you go there, you would find a southern minority who will tell you that they don’t want to be part of it, even among the Igbo. Some Igbo will tell you that they don’t want it. If there is definitive kind of discrimination against certain segments of the country, that needs to be addressed because injustice creates dissatisfaction. If there have been injustices against one particular group in this country, let’s address it and not by taking the law into their hands.
That is criminality. We are also affected but we want to take it in a matured approach. You cannot go and begin to destroy state apparatus in order to achieve your agitation, it is against the law. I am not in a position to talk about which contract was revoked because I am not involved in that.
If those contracts were illegally awarded without going through the due process and the current administration wants to follow due process, what is bad about that? Go and do your investigation on that contract to see whether the old law that qualifies one for such contracts were made. What do you award contracts to militants for? In the first place, the name ‘militant’ is criminality. It is only this country that somebody will come back and say I am a militant and then ‘you award him contract.’ If they claim to be agitators as they are saying, then let them come out with their demands and not by holding the state to ransom.


Now, how would you want the government to handle this situation?

My advice is that you can’t take government for ransom. If their livelihoods have been damaged considerably by the pipelines and they have nowhere to go, let there be adequate compensation to them. It is not to take laws into their hands. And by the way, let me be honest with you, this is natural resources; nobody owns it and nobody farms it but by virtue of the location that you find yourself. If there is ecological diversification and you need to do something for your livelihood, then you table this issue to the federal government so that there would be amicable resolution.

Giving the adverse effects of their actions, will it not be better to seek dialogue?

What do they need? Let them come out and tell government that ‘this has been our farmland, it has been devastated, we have no land to farm anymore’ and then bring a proposal to the federal government. This is how it should be done than issuing threats. If I were the president, I would have ended that thing by now.

How would you have done it?

Yes, by closing the whole thing down. Before oil came, didn’t this country exist? So, what are you talking about? We have been blindfolded and Nigeria became so lazy, a nation of cheap money. Before the oil, we had cocoa, we had palm oil, groundnut and pyramid, and those were the things that actually helped to develop the oil.
At a point, we in Benue challenged them that okay,’ let them go and drink their oil, we would eat our yams and then see who will survive.’

www.vanguardngr.com/2016/06/drink-oil-eat-yams-arewa-chieftain-tells-niger-delta/

Funny but idiotic interview. I pray oil is found in the north so that their land and people will enjoy what we are enjoyin.

Watching the Nigerian drama

Following

really?

Oil has really incapacitated the minds of many.....there is so much opportunities beyond oil.

So we Yoruba people will do what ?

Militant1:
Funny but idiotic interview. I pray oil is found in the north so that their land and people will enjoy what we are enjoyin.

Oga is it by force you die in your town? Can't you just leave it travel elsewhere to hustle?

hakeem4:
So we Yoruba people will do what ?

they will chop their cocoa

or they will start masquerade exportation

The Benue man has no opinion on Fulani herdsmen killing his people daily?
By the time they have taken over all their farms, I wonder where the yams will come from.

dubemnaija:


they will chop their cocoa

or they will start masquerade exportation

Lmao

Lagos people will drink their water

Ogun , osun, ondo will eat their rocks

Ekiti will drink fayose's blood

kaffy4tope:




Oga is it by force you die in your town? Can't you just leave it travel elsewhere to hustle?

Tope? I though it was only my Igbo brothers that say the nonsense you just said. Why must someone travel out of his town if he can stay there and make a good living for himself?

... We'll "drink" our oil, abi you wan bring cup make we pour small for you?? No need... You have been drinking it for decades now.



We will sell our oil, use the proceeds to purchase all the "yam" in your region... That way we have everything.... Its a win-win for us...

I want my people to understand something
The amount of oil taken from the Niger Delta is 2.2 million barrels per day
This will give u 803 million barrels per year
Even if oil is sold at $70 per barrel
That will give u just over 56 billion dollars
The oil companies will take 45% leaving us with just over 36 billion dollars
Coverting this to naira, we have 10 trillion At best
We have over 35 million people in the Niger Delta
And if this money is shared to everyone we will all get 292,292 thousand per year and 24k per month But an hausa farmer can get far more than this in his 10 hectare farm

Hope now, our oil is not even enough to turn us to dubai or Qatar oil based economy is bad

The money may sound big but break it down then u will understand

I pray say them go gree

the money from oil boosted your yam production...for your information Saudi Arabia doesn't plant yams but they are very rich...He who has oil has riches...except for naija

mtcheeww!

hakeem4:
So we Yoruba people will do what ?

u go back to carrying shit. abi u never hear fela sing am? na una calling b dat. zombies are known for carrying shit.

Cameroun got enough yams and plantain. Abakaliki and Otuocha get yam too.

Jokers everywhere

I dey laugh ooooooo, get ready to use the proceeds frm yam to RUN your region, if hungry no fire all of una....

hakeem4:
So we Yoruba people will do what ?

You eat your cocoa

What an idiotic tin to say...
M not surprised sha... Yam don block their brains, notin to think wit

Old men with deranged and degenerated grey matter are the problems of this country.
When we start electing young men and women with sound mind to lead us, then our problems are half solve.Thus discarding this oldies and recycled politicians from our political system.
Senator JKN WAku,you said you wouldn't give in to dialogue but the militant should bring their demands to the table.How would you resolve their demands without dialogue and round table talk?Hmmm,grey matter is lacking here.
Honourable senator you bluffed about Niger Delta not owning their oil but was only opportune for ecological diversification.Then i implore you to take the same assertion to other oil rich countries of the world and start tapping their resources telling them nature owns their resources not them.Let's watch them clapp and applaud you.
They should go and drink their oil while you eat your yam.But you are stil bordered and crying about their activities.How it is sabotaging the country economy.
Then will your yam be enough for you to eat cos you have being eating your yams all this while, still using their oil proceeds to buy ingredients to cook your yams,your up keeps and development.

hakeem4:
So we Yoruba people will do what ?

but yoruba also get oil now....Lagos and Ondo

mrvitalis:
I want my people to understand something
The amount of oil taken from the Niger Delta is 2.2 million barrels per day
This will give u 803 million barrels per year
Even if oil is sold at $70 per barrel
That will give u just over 56 billion dollars
The oil companies will take 45% leaving us with just over 36 billion dollars
Coverting this to naira, we have 10 trillion At best
We have over 35 million people in the Niger Delta
And if this money is shared to everyone we will all get 292,292 thousand per year and 24k per month But an hausa farmer can get far more than this in his 10 hectare farm

Hope now, our oil is not even enough to turn us to dubai or Qatar oil based economy is bad

The money may sound big but break it down then u will understand

Ijaw will never agree with urhobo and itsekiri on anything. Btw, where in the world is a country's revenue shared this way? None. We are in this mess because of lack of transparency and accountability in government. Ss clamoured for more share of the oil revenue and got 13% derivation. That gives them trillions of naira more than the other parts of the country. But their leaders are stealing the money, leaving the people in poverty and the region underdeveloped. The terrorists are now blowing up oil facilities, instead of demanding good governance,transparency and accountability from the governors. As the saying goes, if you burn down your father's house, where will you lay your head?

e pain am!

mu2sa2:
Ijaw will never agree with urhobo and itsekiri on anything. Btw, where in the world is a country's revenue shared this way? None. We are in this mess because of lack of transparency and accountability in government. Ss clamoured for more share of the oil revenue and got 13% derivation. That gives them trillions of naira more than the other parts of the country. But their leaders are stealing the money, leaving the people in poverty and the region underdeveloped. The terrorists are now blowing up oil facilities, instead of demanding good governance,transparency and accountability from the governors. As the saying goes, if you burn down your father's house, where will you lay your head?

Not really shared like that, but it really give them and idea of how poor we will all be if we fold our hands and still depend of oil

Spot on drink your oil and we'II eat our yam.

Militant1:
Funny but idiotic interview. I pray oil is found in the north so that their land and people will enjoy what we are enjoyin.

militant are criminals, they should be jail, is only d leaders that can bring demand to d table, not millitant.

its careless statments like this that win more fans for NDA

pikin1:
What an idiotic tin to say...
M not surprised sha... Yam don block their brains, notin to think wit

and oil block our brains in niger delta, and trade block ipod brains, cocoa block yoruba brains etc

On no condition should this topic hit front page!!! What!!!