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.
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.
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.
