Delta State Commissioner for Information, Dr. Festus Gozien Okubor says negotiators with the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), have achieved major breakthrough and that soon the remaining three hostages would be released.
Okubor however called on all corporate stakeholders in the Niger Delta to invest massively in the area as a way of resolving the problem of youth restiveness once and for all.
A meeting of the national executives of Ijaw Youth Congress (IYC), which opened on Monday in Effurun near Warri, Delta state has also raised fresh hope for the early release of the three remaining hostages.
Sources close to the meeting told Daily Independent that top on the agenda of the congress were the issue of the remaining hostages and state of Ijaw nation and Nigeria today. Kingsley Kuku the only Ijaw member of the Ondo State House of Assembly who briefed the press said a communiqu� would be issued on Tuesday.
Okubor who spoke in Lagos on Monday during a courtesy visit to the corporate headquarters of Independent Newspapers Limited, in Ogba, Ikeja, Lagos said the problem of youth restiveness in the Niger-Delta region would be resolved if all corporate stakeholders would join hands together to alleviate the sufferings of the people of the Niger-Delta.
�All corporate stakeholders in the Niger-Delta must exhibit good corporate citizenship. They must have good corporate responsibilities to the people of the Niger-Delta and the Niger-Delta area.
�What I mean is that the corporate citizen; which include the Federal Government, all the state governments, the local governments, the NDDC, all the oil companies, must actively work to develop infrastructure in that area. They must actively work to develop commerce and industry, must actively work to ensure that the sufferings of the people in those areas are reduced to the barest minimum�, the commissioner emphasized.