Some youths from the Niger Delta region have rejected the three to five percent equity shares allotted to oil host communities in the Petroleum Industry Bill recently passed by both chambers of the National Assembly.

The youth groups during a protest in Port Harcourt, the Rivers state capital on Monday, said the region has been “stripped off of their rights and entitlement after sixty-five years of oil discovery, exploration, sacrifices and devastation of their environment in the region”.

One of the leaders of the protest, Solomon Lenu who read out the position of the youths threatened to withdraw cooperation with oil multinational companies should President Muhammadu Buhari accede to the bill.

Lenu demanded for “a ten per cent equity shares” for the host communities in the interest of peace and justice.

He also noted that the region fears that it “will be worse off than we were under this system that appears to be careless about the collective survival and future of the people even though the keys to the economic engine that keeps Nigeria is domiciled in our backyard”.

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Other leaders of the protest who spoke during the journalist also threatened that the youths will withdraw their “social license” for the oil companies in the region if the President goes ahead to “accent” the bill.