Mkpoikana Udoma
27 July 2018, Sweetcrude, Port Harcourt — The Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, has charged students and youths to join in campaigning for peace and security in the Niger Delta region.
Managing Director of NDDC, Dr. Nsima Ekere, who gave the charge when students from the region paid a courtesy visit to the Commission’s head office in Port Harcourt, urged the students to promote peace and dialogue as the preferred options for driving development in Nigeria’s oil-rich region.
Ekere represented by the Executive Director, Projects, Engr. Samuel Adjogbe 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.
The NDDC boss said that students and youths of the Niger Delta region have a crucial role to play in enthroning peace.
“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 NDDC was doing its best to enhance the education of youths of the region. As part of this effort, he said that application for the 2018 NDDC Foreign Post Graduate Scholarship programme has commenced.
Earlier, the National President, Niger Delta Students Union Government, Comrade Ifon Daniel Samuel, said the students’ body was ready to execute programmes that would create strong educational consciousness in the Niger Delta region.
Samuel said that the student’s union was already planning to host a summit on peace and security in the Niger Delta and appealed to NDDC to assist the union on its forthcoming convention which would incorporate discussions on critical issues affecting the region.