President’s Speech

BRIEF REMARKS BY INDG/IPA PRESIDENT ON THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY MEETING ON SATURDAY 27TH AUGUST 2022

Good evening my dearly cherished and highly honoured ladies and gentlemen of the INDG/IPA Organisation. It is my greatest pleasure and honour to see and speak to you on a one-on-one basis since this journey started on 29th May 2021. I want to appreciate you all for sacrificing premium time to be with us this evening for this very important deliberation. I’ll be very brief in my remarks and I appeal to every participant to also be time conscious. This meeting as advertised is a State Of Our Union Address to brief you on some of our activities for this period of time that the present executive management committee has been in office. I want to thank every member of the IPA/INDG including our BoT, BoA , Plenary and the EMC for your unqualifiable and un quantifiable cooperation since we came into office. I’ll start by leveraging those areas where we have achieved success and those areas where we have not been so successful. I’ll classify our bright areas as (1) Website construction. ( 2) The new Constitution and its registration with the Corporate Affairs Commission. (3. ) The INDG/IPA Think Tank committee also known as the T: 15 Group. (4) Solution to photos on DP requests and payment of dues and fees.( 5 ) The Scholarship and Training Committee.

(1) INDG/IPA WEBSITE :

This website has been developed to global standards and specifications and is ready for launching anytime from now. Let us give a resounding applause to the EMC Vice President, Lady lbinabo Fiberesima who paid #60,000 naira for payment of two years extension for the website rentals. I also want to appreciate our EMC Director and PDP Presidential Aspirant, Dame Tari Oba Oliver, who is paying #120,000 naira as part of our new Website Executive Assistant’s salary to run through his 12 months contract. Mr. Johnson Opigo the website genius will brief us shortly and introduce our new website Executive Assistant.

( 2 ) THE NEW INDG/IPA COMPREHENSIVE CONSTITUTION

This new Constitution has been signed by the BoT members and all attempts to register it with the Corporate Affairs Commission are in top gear. The new Constitution therefore replaces the 3-page Constitution, which was hurriedly drafted to register the Ijaw People Assembly.

(3) THE T- 15 GROUP:

This Think Tank Committee was established to formulate developmental strategies to bring industrial and agrarian revolution to every nook and corner of ljaw Nation. The group comprises of the best ljaw physical development strategists, technocrats and administrators all over the world.

( 4 ) CELEBRATING OUR BIRTHDAYS :

The EMC decided to continue the use honouring our financial members by inserting their photographs in all the four IPA loops. This is presently the only privilege being enjoyed by members of the organisation. The EMC decided that only financially compliant members will be so honoured.

( 5 ) BOARD OF ADMINISTRATORS :

The EMC also decided to rijig the Board of Administrators as our platforms have been turned into billboards without any reaction from the BOA

(6) THE SCHOLARSHIP AND TRAINING COMMITTEE :

This committee was set up in March 2022 to make ljaw undergraduates and apprentices to benefit in their educational and professional programs. Mr. Tamunobere Philip-Brown, EMC’s Director of Audit will brief us shortly on this committee

( 7 ) REGISTRATION FEES AND ANNUAL DUES:

Like we all know, our registration fee of #5000 naira and annual dues of #12,000 naira still remains the same. Registration fees are paid only once, while annual dues are yearly. I’m appealing to all members to pay the above as and when due, as these are our only means of funding presently. From both statements of accounts in our Zenith and Sterling banks, our total credit is #4,465,585 . 52k . I also want to confirm that this EMC has not spent any money from the above accounts as most of the EMC Directors have personally contributed all monies spent by the EMC. Other projects include the Zoom Conference on the PlA Bill and how it impacts on host communities. We intend to invite the Honourable Minister of State for Petroleum Resources Chief Timipre Marlyn Silva and the GMD of NNPC Alhaji Mele Kyari. We have also invited some other resource persons for this major event. There are plans to hold an INDG/IPA Summit where we will invite Stakeholders and Politicians to tell us what plans they have for the ljaw Nation and what benefits we hope to get from their political Parties and to commit them to making concrete promises for the betterment of Ijaw nation. That is the INDG/IPA summit which is still in the pipeline.
I want to use this opportunity to thank all of you for coming as we progress with this all important meeting.

Benjamin Nanaghan
President INDG/IPA