The Acting Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Prof Nelson Brambaifa, has charged students and youths to embrace consultation and shun confrontation.
Brambaifa, who gave the charge when the Executive of the Students’ Union Government of Rivers State University paid him a courtesy visit at the Commission’s headquarters in Port Harcourt, urged them to promote peace and dialogue as the preferred options for driving development in the Niger Delta region.
He said: “I am very familiar with students because they are members of my constituency. I always advise them to employ the three Cs – Consultation, Consolidation before Confrontation. In any struggle, you have to first of all negotiate before you get to the point of confrontation.”
The NDDC Chief Executive Officer urged the students to be of good behaviour and engage themselves in meaningful activities, stating that they should take advantage of the Commission’s Foreign Post Graduate Scholarship Programme.
He emphasised the need to support programmes that would help to foster peace in parts of the Niger Delta, noting that NDDC was doing its best to enhance the education of youths of the region.
Brambaifa said: “We need to focus on poverty reduction and wealth creation to impact significantly on the lives of the people. And to create wealth, you have to provide employment for the teeming youths.”
The NDDC boss recalled that the Willinks’ Commission of 1958 recommended that the Niger Delta region should be treated as a special area, requiring special intervention. This, he said, gave rise to the Niger Delta Basin Development Authority and other intervention agencies before NDDC.
Earlier, the President of the SUG, Mr Elvis Osima Gogo, commended the NDDC for supporting education in the Niger Delta. He said: “We appreciate all the good works being done by the NDDC, especially in the area of Post Graduate Foreign Scholarship Programme.”
He said that as a mark of appreciation, the students deemed it fit to present a portrait tagged the “Silver Star Award” to the Acting Managing Director, “for his friendship and accessibility to students.”
The SUG President appealed to President Muhammadu Buhari to confirm the appointment of Prof Brambaifa as the substantive Managing Director of the NDDC.