Minister of Youths and Sports, Solomon Dalung, has disclosed details of his discreet meeting with the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA).
Dalung said he traveled to Oporoza in Gbaramatu kingdom in Delta State last Wednesday for a face to face chat with the agitators as part of the federal government’s commitment to ending bombing of oil installations in the region.
Dalung told newsmen at the end of a stakeholders’ meeting of the Southern senatorial zone of Plateau State, that he took a two-hour journey to the creeks via the sea.
He said: “As youth minister, I know that the Avengers are mostly youths who have potentials to be great citizens of this country.”
“On reaching the community after the two-hour journey on the high sea, I met with the members of the communities who told me that their dream was to be included in the Nigerian project, that the education facilities and other basic social amenities are almost non-existent in the communities. They also raised concern of incessant attacks by the Nigerian Military.”
Dalung recalled that after meeting with the communities, he was escorted by the Niger Delta ambassadors to the leadership of Avengers who gave him a hand-written letter specifying their demands which he said he was yet to present to President Muhammadu Buhari.
He said he has not open the letter but that the Avengers had raised three important issues to him.
“The issues include the Niger-Delta Maritime University, pipeline community policing which they said the government had denied them, and the inability of the government to continue with the amnesty programme established by former President Umaru Musa Yarádua Yar’Adua.”
He lamented what he saw while there, saying the level of degradation in Niger-Delta communities was disturbing.
“After going round some of the communities, I noticed that government projects were almost non-existent. I saw a secondary school signboard somewhere but the school is yet to be developed, the community has a clinic but still at the foundation level and a borehole that is not functional.”
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