US $50 million emergency fund voted for Delta

Frustrated by the slow pace of national assembly approval for development of the Niger Delta, the federal government approved on Tuesday at least US $50 million in emergency funds to the troubled south-east, news reports said, quoting presidential spokesman Doyin Okupe. He told reporters in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, on Tuesday the federal government could no longer wait for the assembly to pass the bill on the Niger Delta Development Commission. “The situation, the degradation, the suffering, the pains that exist in the Niger Delta are such that one will not wait,” he said. Therefore, the government will immediately begin construction of roads in the impoverished Bayelsa State, link the state to the national electricity grid and establish a technical training school for youths in the Delta oil town of Bonny, Rivers State.