Date Published: 05/29/09

Presidency to meet Niger Delta Negotiating Team

The Presidency will meet in the next few days with the Niger Delta Peoples’ Peace and Progress Negotiating Team (PPPNT) that came into being in accordance with one of the Resolutions arrived at during last weekend’s 2 nd All-Niger Delta Peoples Assembly that was convened in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, by the United Niger Delta Energy Development Security Strategy (UNDEDSS).

Disclosing this in Lagos, during a post-Assembly Press Briefing, UNDEDSS’ Secretary-General, Mr. Tony I. Uranta, said the Peoples’ Peace and Progress Negotiating Team (PPPNT), which will be led by His Excellency Admiral Okhai Mike Akhigbe (rtd.), will meet with President Yar’Adua, Vice President Goodluck Jonathan, the Secretary to the Federal Government, the National Security Adviser, the Defence Chiefs, the Inspector General of Police, the Niger Delta and Petroleum Ministries’ Ministers et al.

Members of Admiral Akhigbe’s Peoples Negotiations Team will include HRM King Alfred Diette-Spiff, Professors Pat Utomi and Kevin Etta, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, Etubom Tony Ani, Barrister Tamakare Yekwe, Mr. Sam Amuka-Pemu, Alabo Graham-Douglas, Ms. Annkio Briggs, Barrister Charles Edosonwan (SAN), Senator Stella Omu, Mr. Bello Oboko, Prince Albert Esiri, Mr. Bassey Eniang and Mr. Tony Uranta.

Mr. Uranta, who was very agitated about the non-cessation of genocidal acts in Gbaramatu Kingdom of Delta State and a new upsurge in alleged extrajudicial killings by security forces throughout the region, however said “our having agreed to meet with the Presidency, is without prejudice to the Niger Delta Peoples’ resolve that the Federal Government must immediately cease its ongoing genocidal attacks on communities in the region, must immediately grant unfettered access for humanitarian assistance to get to the beleaguered people of Gbaramatu, and must jettison any crazy notion of expanding its theatre of carnage into any other states of the region”.

The UNDEDSS Scribe berated the United Nations and foreign governments for what he termed “the same apathy and lethargy that made them culpable of having allowed the genocide in Bosnia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Darfur get out of hand before they reluctantly began interventions”!

Uranta claimed that “if national and international pressure had prevailed upon President Yar’Adua to sincerely and holistically implement Recommendations in the Report of his Technical Committee on the Niger Delta, submitted six months ago, starting with the creation of a credible multi-stakeholder Committee to oversee ceasefire, amnesty, disarmament, decommissioning, demilitarisation, reorientation, rehabilitation and reintegration processes, we could have avoided the bloody pass we find ourselves in today”.

In ending, Mr. Uranta, who served on the Presidential Technical Committee, prayed “that the President would uphold his oath of office and do all that is best for the common good of ALL Nigerians, without allowing hawks in his cabinet or bigots in the National Assembly to sway his better judgment, so we can finally lay the bogeyman of the region’s insecurity to rest, and embrace a new dawn of sustainable peace and progress in not just the Niger Delta, but in the whole of Vision 20-20-20 Nigeria”.