Bayelsa Pension Bill: Don’t Take Our Calmness For Granted, IYC Warns Lawmakers

Hon. Eldred Digimie Pogonyo, Speaker of Mobile Parliament of Ijaw Youth Council (IYC) Worldwide, has called on the Speaker and members of Bayelsa State House of Assembly to have a rethink on their proposed bill for pension for past, present and future members of the Assembly, describing it as anti-people bill geared towards serving their myopic, parochial, inordinate, and selfish ambitions.

Pogonyo, in a statement, said it was an affront on the psych of the people for the legislators to contemplate on such draconian cum inhuman act against Bayelsans whom they rode on their back to position of affluence and authority to unilaterally apportion a chunk of the state’s treasury to themselves.

He said the act was not only vexatious, but should tell all and sundry that they had deliberately decided to fail in the mandate bestowed on them by diverting from making laws that would promote the Bayelsa business community to attract investors, make laws to protect their ravaged environment, laws that would create the enabling environment for young Bayelsans to meet their full potentials.

He said that Bayelsans expected laws that would provides social security for the common people, protect their interests, safety and wellbeing and would prompt IOCs to establish their operational base in Bayelsa, laws that would  safeguards the sanctity of the people’s collective patrimony cum treasury for generations unborn.

According to him, “for our elected legislators, whom ordinarily, are supposed to be the life wire and direct bridge of the people to government, as well as the sole symbol of a representative democracy, to wittingly carry on such unholy act that parallels the yearnings of their constituents without due consultation, is a joke taken too far, which goes to show their level of insatiable greed, high handedness and utter disrespect of the people they were elected to protect.

“The thought in itself is diabolical and sacrilegious; again, the act of usurping tax payers’ money, in the guise of sitting allowance, to deliberate on such devious concept, amounts to what I can best describe as, representative rascality, gavel impunity and legislative terrorism, which is a gross misconduct, an aberration and dereliction of duty.”

He warned that the simplicity and calmness of young people in the state, as enjoyed by the restoration government for over seven years, should not be taken as cowardice and for granted.

He called on the society to prevail on the Bayelsa State House of Assembly to refrain from and stop forthwith, the passage of what he termed “evil piece of draconian legislation, which is intended towards looting the state treasury and consequently an entrapment of the destiny of generation of future Bayelsans.”