The Delta State Commissioner for Information, Mr Charles Aniagwu, has described the exodus of hundreds of able-bodied northern youths to the southern parts of the country as a survival strategy and not part of an agenda in readiness for war as being speculated.
Aniagwu who made this clarification while addressing newsmen in Warri, noted that the people should desist from assuming that the mass movement of the teeming northern youths was to cause havoc in the South as they have come to see the southern region as their greener pastures.
According to him, “there’s no truth in claim that the northern youths moving massively to the South are coming in anticipation of possible attack in this part of the country. The truth is that the movement is a desperate move for survival.
“These people in the North also have relations and friends who are already living in the South and they are getting feelers of how they are working and making ends meet in the South, especially with menial jobs that they being hired to work on daily basis.
“What you see happening now is that while those in the South see travelling abroad as their greener pastures these people also are beginning to see the South East, South-South and South-West as their abroad where they can come to seek greener pastures.
“You can also see from the reports we are getting that there were no guns recovered from them during the time the trucks conveying them were intercepted and that goes to show that they are harmless in search of how to earn their daily bread”.
The commissioner further revealed that “we can’t wish away the fact that many of our youths in this part of the country are either too lazy or feeling too big to do certain menial jobs but these Hausa boys are ever ready and willing to carry out these jobs and earn a living from it.
“You know know the value of earning N2,000 per day in the South from doing all sorts of menial jobs but an Hausa guy will be proud to earn such and save to send more to his people at the end of the month”, he stated.
On the reportage of Coronavirus in the state, Aniagwu thanked the press for living up to expectations in supporting the state government to sensitive the people or preventions and complying with procedures of reporting themselves to the various Isolation centres when they discovered they have traces of the symptoms.
He noted that it was based on the cooperation of the idea practitioners in the state that the government was able to curtail the spread of the virus among residents of the state.
Ben Dunno
