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POLITICAL leaders and elders from the North under the headship of the Second Republic President, Alhaji Shehu Shagari, and their counterparts from the South-South geo-political zone, led by Chief Matthew Mbu, are meeting for the second time in four months in Abuja tomorrow for further talks on a realistic pact between the broad-based North and South in 2007.
WARRI - POLITICAL leaders and elders from the North under the headship of the Second Republic President, Alhaji Shehu Shagari, and their counterparts from the South-South geo-political zone, led by Chief Matthew Mbu, are meeting for the second time in four months in Abuja tomorrow for further talks on a realistic pact between the broad-based North and South in 2007.
The first talks dubbed 'bridge building" between the Shagari- piloted Northern group and the South-South under the new political dispensation were held September, last year, in Abuja. A committee was set up at the end of the meeting to review, among other things, the quest by the South-South to produce the next president and increase in derivation from the 25 per cent benchmark of the zone to 50 per cent in the next five years.
The committee is expected to brief the Assembly on its findings at tomorrow's meeting and depending on the open-mindedness of the North in the matter, the South-South may push for the participation of the whole South in subsequent gatherings to avoid the wrong impression about its separate meeting with the North.
National chairman of the South-South People's Assembly (SSPA), which facilitated the North/South-South meeting to renew the old ties between the former political allies before the grand reunion of the three geo-political zones in the South at Enugu, Chief Raymond Alegho Dokpesi confirmed tomorrow's meeting to Vanguard, yesterday, in a phone interview.
He said there should be no fear over the meeting as the South-South would not negotiate away its avowed declaration to produce the next President. Another prominent leader of the zone and first civilian governor of Edo State, Chief John Oyegun, corroborated Dokpesi's assertion.
However, investigations by Vanguard showed that some South-South leaders were having some skepticism over the meeting and have advised that the zone should shun it.