The Ijaw National Congress has encouraged previous President Goodluck Jonathan to influence the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd), not to sign into law the dubious Petroleum Industry Bill passed by the National Assembly.

The INC also sought the former president’s support for plans by the apex Ijaw socio-cultural organisation to take its struggle to the international community.

The group’s President, Prof. Benjamin Okaba, spoke when he led the executive members of the body and the central zone officials of the Ijaw Youth Council on a visit to Jonathan in his office in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State.

Okaba, a professor of Sociology at the Federal University, Otuoke, said Jonathan should intervene and urge Buhari to demonstrate understanding by declining his assent to the PIB.

Okaba also told the former president that apart from the PIB, the INC was also aware of moves in some quarters to re-introduce the rejected National Water Resources Bill at the National Assembly for passage to annex Ijaw nation territories.

While seeking Jonathan’s backing for efforts by INC to take the Ijaw struggle to the international community, Okaba said the body had sufficient evidence to prove that Ijaw people had been maltreated by the Nigerian state over the years.

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“Our advocacy on resource justice, restructuring and the creation of, at least, additional two states as minimum conditions for our commitment to the Nigerian cause, is something that we wish to take to the international circles.

“We are ripe enough to take the struggle to international levels. We want to present our case and we have empirical evidence to justify the fact that we have been treated badly in a country that we have sustained with our oil resources,” he added.

Jonathan encouraged the INC officials to feel free to seek his involvement in any issue, adding that he was ready to play his role in the service to Ijaw land.