The Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), has charged students and youths to join in campaigning for peace and security in the Niger Delta region.
Giving the advice on behalf of the Managing Director, Nsima Ekere, at the NDDC headquarters in Port Harcourt, the Executive Director Projects, Samuel Adjogbe, urged Niger Delta students to promote peace and dialogue as the preferred options for driving development in Nigeria’s oil-rich region.
He stated that promoting awareness campaigns within the Niger delta region remained a viable tool for development agencies that need peace and security to deliver on their mandates, adding that “as an interventionist agency, we require a peaceful environment to carry out our duties.”
Adjogbe said that students and youths of the Niger Delta region have a crucial role to play in enthroning peace. He declared: “We don’t want protests and agitations in the Niger Delta anymore. Dialogue is the way to go. We should be talking and negotiating, rather than chasing away investors.
“Insecurity increases investment costs and it is based on this that the NDDC is looking at achieving a Niger Delta where investors and expatriates are confident of establishing their businesses for the overall development of the region.”
He emphasised the need to support programmes that would help to foster peace in parts of the Niger Delta, noting that the NDDC was doing its best to enhance the education of youths of the region. As part of this effort, he said that the process for the selection of the 2018 NDDC Foreign Post Graduate Scholarship programme had started.
Earlier, the National President, Niger Delta Students Union Government, Ifon Daniel Samuel, remarked that the students’ body was ready to execute programmes that would create strong educational consciousness in the Niger Delta region.
He said that the Students Union Government was already planning to host a summit on peace and security in the Niger Delta. He, therefore, appealed to the NDDC to assist the NDSUG in their forthcoming convention which would incorporate discussions on critical issues affecting the region.