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Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Dimeji Bankole has appealed to the youths in the Niger Delta region to embrace peace, saying no genuine development can be achieved through incessant violence.
Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Dimeji Bankole has appealed to the youths in the Niger Delta region to embrace peace, saying no genuine development can be achieved through incessant violence.
Besides, he said the current wave of violent attacks in the oil rich Delta region portends grave danger for the youth in the area who incidentally are the leaders of tomorrow.
It would be recalled that the spate of violent attacks on oil installations, kidnappings and killings in the Delta region has assumed a worrisome dimension in recent times such that the crisis in the area has affected the global crude oil price.
However, the Speaker in a statement signed by his Special Adviser on Media, Mr Kayode Akinmade said the situation in the area requires urgent attention but cautioned that it is only in a peaceful atmosphere that, the government can embark on meaningful development of the region.
' We all agreed there is need for urgent development of the Niger Delta, but nothing meaningful can be done without peace," he said. Consequently, he appealed to all the youths in the area as well as the militants groups to give the current administration of President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua the opportunity and time to address their grievances.
Bankole said 'government's genuine interest in resolving the age long neglect of the area informed the allocation of larger proportion of the 2008 budget to the development of the Niger Delta."
He said the issue of infrastructural and economic development of the region has been declared a matter of national emergency and as such all and sundry should join hands with government to make it realizable.
Noting that the youths should realise that the future of the country belong to them, he said any attempt to ignore this fact will have a fatal effect on them and that posterity may not forgive them either.
'It is unreasonable and irreconcilliable for a group or an individual to be fighting to liberate a people whose future and tomorrow is being imperiled by restiveness and senseless violent activities,"he said.
He reasoned that much that the nation belongs to all, no effort should be seen to be too great or small to ensure that the unity and progress of the country is held sacrosanct.