Pro-National Conference Organisation (PRONACO), has concluded arrangements for elder statesman, Chief Anthony Enahoro, and Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, to lead its Advocacy Team to militant groups in the Niger Delta, especially those fighting on the side of principle.
Disclosing this to newsmen in Lagos yesterday, PRONACO’s spokesman, Mr Olawale Okunniyi, said the advocacy team was deeply worried at the death toll of defenceless citizens caught in cross-fire of renewed hostilities between government forces and militia in PortHarcourt, and may have to consider setting up a strategic engagement with self determination groups in the Niger Delta in curbing the dangerous trend. Okunniyi said the strategic engagement was targeted at warding-off a scenario where the Niger Delta struggle will be forced into criminality and discredited by contrived activities of agent provocateurs and fifth columnists.
According to him, the advocacy team decided to chose the two eminent Nigerians, because it had earlier carried out assessment work in the Niger Delta under the auspices of concerned Nobel Laureates.
�This latest intervention, which is situated within the context of PNC’s on-going advocacy for a just and stable federation, will help to redefine the Niger Delta struggle and expose agent provocateurs and fifth columnists currently operating in the region, because the increasing casualty on the part of unarmed Nigerians is unacceptable to us,� Okunniyi said.
The body also averred that the renewed armed fighting between government forces and Niger Delta militia is a clear indication that government, being a party in the Niger Delta crisis, cannot resolve the conflict amicably without degenerating into mayhem and bloodshed.
�Therefore what the Niger Delta crisis requires, at this stage, is not government direct engagement but the trusted credible intervention of an independent conflict resolution process anchored by respected national leaders,� Okunniyi advised
The statement however, informed that a list of self-determination militants in the region to be engaged by the PNC Advocacy Team is already being compiled as the strategic intervention is proposed to coincide with the advocacy briefing of Heads of Delegations to the Peoples� National Conference holding early next month at a venue in southern Nigeria.
Okunniyi further disclosed that the PNC Advocacy Team is expected to dispatch lobbyists to the next UN convention on indigenous people and self-determination in furtherance of its international advocacy for true federalism and peoples� democracy in Nigeria.
Aug242007