Ahamefula Ogbu and Omon-Julius Onabu
9 November 2009
Port Harcourt/ Warri — Participants and resource persons at a post amnesty forum tagged "Delta Youth beyond the Amnesty" organised by the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) yesterday in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, said the lasting solution to the Niger Delta problems was to provide employment and engagement for the teeming youths in the region.
Also at another post-amnesty summit in Warri,Delta state, the need for all youths in the Niger-Delta to avoid the pitfalls of the past when they were used by certain politicians to foment election violence and hooliganism and then discarded was stressed.
In Port Harcourt, participants said it was necessary for any programme to address the issue to be all encompassing instead of the push towards rehabilitating the armed militants while neglecting the welfare of other youths that have not carried arms.
It was agreed that since the Federal Government was determined to introduce programmes that are aimed at developing the region, the youths should embrace the opportunity and ensure that they transit from carrying gun to ensuring that they rebuild the region and make it big in post amnesty period.
In his paper, former Chairman of Nigerian Economic Summit, Professor Anya O. Anya, said that youths cannot be ignored as they constitute 60 percent of the population and that anything whether in planning and execution that relegates their interest was bound to fail.
"Moreover, the youths in Nigeria as in any other nation constitute the future of the nation for they are the future - their views, their visions and indeed their commitment to the vision that they project should shape the new Nigerian future," he said. That is why we must take their views seriously for they constitute the major stakeholders in the nation's future," he said.
In his paper, President of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP), Mr. Ledum Mitte, warned that concentrating on the armed youths who have submitted their weapons to the exclusion of the unarmed and unemployed youth would spell doom.
He said it would not only give the impression that crime was rewarding but will breed another set of militants and a merry go round of the same amnesty will go on.Also, he accused the Federal Government of picking parts of the recommendations of the Niger Delta Technical Committee which he chaired and opined that more would be achieved if the recommendations were implemented.
Mitte said it was fraudulent for the government to place embargo on employment while going through the back door to employ the connected and wondered where in a situation of mass unemployment, an embargo was placed on employing the youths who resort to crime from idleness.
Speakers and participants at Delta State NDDC Youth Summit held yesterday at Efurun-Warri, as part of the post-amnesty programme of the Niger-Delta were unanimous that some politicians might in their characteristic desperation during elections be plotting to take advantage of the youths towards 2011 general election in Nigeria, and said that this must be resisted by the youths.
Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan of Delta State, in his message to the summit, said that government was pursuing vigorously its rehabilitation and reintegration programme for the indigenes of the State who have taken advantage of the presidential amnesty to make themselves useful citizens of the state and country.
The governor said " We have six skills acquisition centres strengthened with equipment in the areas of ICT, among others".
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2009 This Day. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
