The National Association of Itsekiri Graduates, NAIG has bare fang at the Managing Director of Delta State Oil Producing Areas Development Commission, DESOPADEC, Olorogun Williams Makinde, labeling him “an ethnic jingoist” who has “continually rubbish the Itsekiri Nation under the guise of trying to do good face for the Governor of Delta State.”
The scathing remarks of the Itsekiri graduates’ body is coming on the heels of the alleged arrest and later release of the Disciplinary Committee Chairman of NAIG, Comrade Dennis Mene on Monday December 5 by the Police on the purported order of Managing Director of DESOPADEC, Olorogun Williams Makinde.
In a statement released Tuesday December 6 by the National President of NAIG, Comrade Collins Oritsetimeyin Edema, the association noted, “ordinarily, as an Alumni body of International repute, we will not want to be drawn into a normal disciplinary issue between a staff and his employer, but the way and manner with which this had been done without first using the internal organs of the board smells of a grand design to punish Mr. Dennis Mene based on his ethnicity.”
The statement added, “it is on record that whatever reason Mr. Dennis Mene was arrested for being forced to immediately respond to query or face jail by Mr. Makinde is nothing connected to his day-to-day activities or theft/stealing of any kind. What Mr. Makinde’s action simply portrays is that Mr. Dennis Mene will be arrested if he has a matrimonial dispute.”
While alleging that Olorogun Makinde “has been on an ethnic cleansing mission against the Itsekiri people who unfortunately for him contributes the highest quantum of crude oil to the state,” NAIG asserted, “our contact to the Office of the Executive Governor of Delta State also shows that His Excellency is unaware of the unjust treatment being meted out to Mr. Dennis Mene purportedly on his orders,” stressing that during Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan’s tenure as Delta State Governor, “several staff of the commission of Urhobo extraction wrote so many demeaning things about him and openly campaigned for Ogboru without being issued a query letter by the board led by an Itsekiri man.”
The Itsekiri graduates’ body stressed that the issue of 2016 “padded DESOPADEC budget” was still fresh in their mind and vowed that “any further attempt to subject Mr. Dennis Mene or any Itsekiri staff of DESOPADEC to any form of ill treatment, arrest, intimidation in his parochial Urhobo agenda will be met with stiff resistance by NAIG.”
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