Victims of 2022 flood disasters in eight Local Government Areas of Rivers State on Friday received trucks load of palliatives from the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC).
The palliatives which were mobilised by the Rivers State Representative on the Board of the NDDC, Sir Tony Okocha were distributed among Tai, Asari-Toru, Abua/Odual and Gokana local government areas.
Others who benefited included Ahoad-East, Ahoada-West, Andoni and Ogba/Egbema/Ndoni local government areas.
The palliatives which comprised several different items in varying quantities were received on behalf of the victims by representatives from their local government areas, especially the council chairmen.
Speaking at the presentation ceremony held at the Port Harcourt Club, the Rivers State NDDC Representative, Okocha stated that the event was in demonstration of the decision of the current Board and Management of NDDC to consciously change the “negative trajectories for which NDDC was hitherto known”.
He said; “Today is one of those demonstrations of the President’s responsiveness to the people of Nigeria. Particularly the President is to empathize through the NDDC with our people who suffered devastations arising from environmental factors. They call it flood victims.
“Today the President through NDDC has assembled palliatives, materials that will be of use to those of our brothers, who suffered devastations for what they didn’t know about.
“Today, the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) distributed 3 truckloads of sundry relief materials to flood victims in eight (8) Local Government Areas in Rivers State that were affected by flood last year.
“All you will see there are things that our displaced brothers and sisters will benefit from, at least to return them to some kind of good lease of life.
“We want to tell the people who will benefit from this that this is the little we can afford, we can do better sometimes, someday”.
He warned that the distribution of the items must not be politicized calling on the various representatives to ensure that the palliatives get the intended beneficiaries.
Speaking earlier, the Director NDDC, Rivers State Office Engr. Theophilus Allagoa explained that the commission decided to start with the worst impacted communities in the selected local government areas.
“The reason we are doing this now is because of the bureaucracy involved in getting this done, otherwise we would have done it earlier in December like our other sister states.
“There about 47 items on the list and we are going to distribute to the impacted communities, three trucks.
“Our purpose of gathering here is to make public that we are distributing these things and the people that we are going to give them are not strangers. We know them. If their wives suddenly start selling Garri in the market we go there and take them because it is their own”.
