LAGOS—THE South-East
and South-South Professionals, have, disagreed with former Adviser to President
Olusegun Obasanjo on Food and Security, Ango
Abdullahi, over his call on the
Federal Government to fight Niger Delta Avengers, NDA, before taking on the
Boko Haram insurgents.
At a book launch in
Abuja, on Tuesday, Abdullahi who said that the unity of Nigeria was negotiable
and Nigerians could go their separate ways “if we could not peacefully develop
the country,” added: ‘’We are not happy with the kind of standard of security
that is applied in the country.
If you are not going to fight (Niger-Delta)
Avengers, you should stop fighting Boko Haram’’ because the activities of the
Avengers constitute the greatest challenge to the security of the nation.
Disagreeing with Ango Abdullahi, SESS professionals said dialogue was the
surest way to resolve the Niger-Delta crisis, arguing that force will be
counter-productive given the nature of the militancy in the oil-rich region.
Led by Mr Emeka Ugwu-Oju, a four-man team of the SESS professionals, which
included Mr Albert Iyorah, Mr Dagogo Karibi-Whyte and Mr Charles Iyore, spoke
during a courtesy visit to Vanguard, on Wednesday.
‘’We are interested in quick
resolution of the Niger-Delta crisis so that we can focus on our multi-billion
dollars agenda for the region.
‘You can’t get peace in Niger-Delta by force.
The militancy is not about people carrying guns to fight people. It is about
sabotage to reduce oil production to zero. It is going to be self-destruct if
we go by force.
“As SESS Professionals, we say you can’t achieve anything by
force. If we did, we will be taking ourselves so many years back. We are
involved in the dialogue. We were part of the first meeting in Abuja.
A
template for further dialogue with all relevant stakeholders was created but
two months after, there seems to be efforts to ensure that the dialogue does
not hold.”
Arguing that they had designed a 20-year economic programme for the
South-East and South-South geo-political zones and had set up a committee to
generate funds to pursue the agenda independent of the 11 state governments,
they said peace was needed to drive the agenda.
‘’At our Port Harcourt meeting,
recently, we set up a committee to get funds to do what should be done in both
zones. If we are able to raise $1billion, it will be easy to get counter-part
funding and if $20 billion is well managed, it will change the face of
South-East and South-South but we can’t have development without peace. That is
why we want the Niger-Delta crisis resolved. With equity and justice, it is
easy to deal with criminals.’’
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