Kachikwu Calls for Dialogue with Niger Delta Militants

Contrary to application of brutal force against militants in the Niger Delta region, the federal government has been advised to engage the vandals who have been attacking oil installations in the region in dialogue.

Making the call yesterday during an interactive session with a coalition of civil society groups held in Lagos, the junior petroleum minister, Ibe Kackikwu, said government should use such opportunity to speak to the militants on why their actions are inimical to the oil rich region.

According to Kachikwu, who noted that government had realised that military tanks would not address the problem of the militants, as the activities of militants is working against efforts by the government to improve the Nigerian economy.
The petroleum minister, who was at the session with Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said he was prepared to engage the people in dialogue with the hope to finding lasting solution to the problems in the region

“The military barrels cannot stop or solve problem of militancy in the Niger Delta region. I will have to go back to my brothers; they are our brothers we will go and dialogue with them,” Kachikwu said.

Comments

Understanding Prof. Yemi Osinbajo - Abraham Ogbodo

Abraham Ogbodo I am trying to understand Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, the Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Often, he speaks out of character. That is, he talks as if he is Vice President before he is a professor of law, even when I know that the latter comes first. The man wasn’t like this when he was the attorney general of Lagos State and a teacher at the Law Faculty of the University of Lagos. Then, his statements were measured and as a seasoned lawyer, based on facts. But today, Osinbajo is sounding like Adams Oshiomhole, a union leader, who by the grace of God, became governor of Edo State for eight years. The revelations about big thefts in the economy had come more from Adams than even Ibrahim Magu, chairman of the EFCC. It was Adams who said former petroleum minister; Mrs. Diezani Allison-Madueke alone stole 13 billion British pounds from the national treasury. That is like saying she stole in raw cash almost twice as much as the entire fortune of Alhaj...

Nigerian govt warns rival labour union, ULC, against strike

Following the threat by the United Labour CONGRESS, ULC, to go on a nationwide strike from September 15 , the federal government on Thursday declared the proposed strike illegal. The strike notice was dated September 8 and is expected to lapse on September 15. Some of the issues highlighted by the ULC, a coalition of various workers’ unions, include: the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment should set up a task force immediately to carry out factory inspection; Government should review the privatisation of Power Holding Company of Nigeria, PHCN; and the Army and Police should withdraw their officers from different work places where they are currently stationed as they intimidate and harass workers in such establishment. The union, a breakaway from the NLC, also demanded the immediate release of its “Registration Certificate.” The ULC is headed by Joe Ajaero, General Secretary of National union of Electricity Employees, NUEE, and Igwe Achese, President of Natio...

The world will have to learn to live with a nuclear North Korea. The alternatives are even worse

The worst possible outcome of the crisis in the Korean peninsula would be a nuclear war. The second worst would be a conventional one. From these simple platitudes everything else follows. The North Korean regime is undoubtedly vile. Its bombs are unnecessary and bought at the cost of great human suffering. The long-term goal of any foreign policy must be to await and, so far as possible, to hasten the end of the dictatorship. But military intervention is no longer a credible option. It could be argued that it never was. The US military seems to have believed since at least 1995 that any war on the Korean peninsula would result in unacceptable casualties and costs. In that case one of the ironies of the present situation is that North Korea has proved, by building one, that it never actually needed a nuclear deterrent. The threat that its conventional artillery and army posed to the South Korean capital, Seoul, where 10 million people live in their range, was enough to preserve ...

ATTENCAO

Search This Blog