Igbo will not surrender their God given natural resources for water bill, insists it’s RUGA in disguise – ASETU tells FG

Igbo community leaders across the eastern region has kicked against the federal government sponsored Water Resources Bill at the National Assembly, declaring that no Community in Igboland will surrender their God given natural resources land, water, insist it Ruga in disguise.

The leaders under the platform of Association of South East Town Unions (ASETU) in a release signed by Chief Emeka Diwe and Hon Gideon Adikwuru, National President and National Secretary respectively on Thursday stated that the Minister of Information and Culture failed to explain the grey areas of the bill.

The release states: “We have read the statement credited to the Honorable Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, in which he made some efforts to deny the nexus between the infamous Water Resources Bill and the rejected RUGA agricultural program.

“The Minister, instead of clarifying the grey areas in the Bill, ended up obfuscating the issue and confirming to us that there is more to the Bill. We therefore wish to state categorically, as the umbrella union of all the communities in Igboland, that no single Igbo community will give up any part of its land or water for this obvious RUGA program which has now been baptized.

“The summary of this Water Bill is that it gives the Federal Government ownership not only over water and underground resources, but absolute control over about three kilometres from the waterfronts. To be clear, this is a disaster in view of the fact that there is hardly any community in Igboland where water bodies are not found.
“In addition to our earlier position that a practice of this nature has no place under a federal arrangement, the Bill also violates the Land Use Act and it is hugely flawed by its provision that the Federal government will authorise or licence persons who may want to sink boreholes anywhere in Nigeria.

“In Attorney General of Lagos State v Attorney General of the Federation the Supreme Court held that the power over physical planning in any state of the Federation is exclusively vested in the state government and that the National Assembly lacks the power to legislate on the physical planning outside the Federal Capital Territory.

“It becomes worrisome that the Federal Government would want to break its own laws in order to acquire our resources for the use of the Fulani herdsmen. This is an existential threat to all Igbo communities and we will never allow it to happen”.

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