Niger Delta leaders drum support for Buhari, urges avengers to embrace peace

Niger Delta leaders drum support
for Buhari, urges avengers to
embrace peace
- Niger Delta leaders have vowed to help
Buhari’s government succeed
- They also urged Niger Delta avengers to
embrace peace and support Buhari’s
government
- The leaders, however, advised the federal
government to take advantage of the
window of opportunity provided by the
Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) for peace
A group of elite Niger Delta stakeholders
has enlisted support for the
administration of President
Muhammadu Buhari, reassuring of its
readiness to work with him to succeed.
Daily Trust reports that the group, at a
consultative meeting with agitators, and
presided over by three leaders of the
Niger Delta struggle—Timi Ogoriba,
Mike Loyibo and Famous Daunemuagha
—passed a vote of confidence on the
Pan-Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF), led by
Edwin Clark
LETSKNOW gathered that the Niger Delta
leaders urged President Buhari to
address the issue of timely funding of
the Amnesty programme and reengineer
it for effective operation and take
decisive steps to sustain the peace in the
oil-rich Niger Delta region and ensure
uninterrupted operation of the oil and
gas sector.
The group however advised the federal
government to take advantage of the
window of opportunity provided by the
Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) for peace to
prove to the region that of its genuinely
committed to the region's development.
The group appealed to the Niger Delta
Avengers, as well as other agitating
groups in the region to allow peace in
the region so that federal government
could have the atmosphere to fulfill its
promises.
Reading out the resolutions of the
meeting at the end of the session, Chief
Loyibo called on the federal government
to "set up a proper a proper dialogue
team to interface with the leaders of the
region, as represented by PANDEF, and
not the inter-ministerial committee, as it
had been hitherto.
"The government should review the
recent appointments in the management
of the NNPC. The promise to compel the
IOCs to relocate back to their primary
areas of field operations in the Niger
Delta should be effected with immediate
effect.
"We are also calling for the amendment
of all the defective provisions of the 1999
Constitution, which have negatively
affected the region. We maintain that
true federalism is the answer to the
Nigerian development question. Let us
have it back the way we had it during the
era of cocoa and groundnut pyramids in
the 50s and 60s,” he said.