Niger Delta Group Shuns FG’s Proposed Summit, Demands Dialogue

The Pan Niger Delta Coastal States Stakeholders Consultative Forum led by Chief Edwin Clark has shunned the proposed two-day summit to be organized by the Federal Government in the region.

This comes after the Niger Delta Avengers militant group attacked an oil installation in the region putting an end to the ceasefire agreement between it and the Federal Government.

The group which has vowed not to attend the proposed summit also urged the United States to compel president Muhammadu Buhari to honor his earlier agreement to dialogue with militants in the region.

Chief Edwin Clark who was represented by former Police Affairs Minister, Alaowei Bozimo, made this known on Saturday while meeting in Effurun, Delta State with a three-man delegation from the United States.

The meeting was however a closed door session as journalists were barred access.

At the end of the meeting, Bozimo informed journalists that “It is timely that the US has come again on a fact-finding mission.”

He continued: “We just told them that we want a dialogue and not the summit that Federal Government intended to convene.

“It is equally a wise decision of the government to have suspended that inappropriate summit going by the reports we have received. We believe that the answer is not a summit. The answer is dialogue. The way forward is not the jamborees or endless summits.

“A very incongruous gathering of nearly 500 persons with government officials talking to themselves at Abuja, which would have been the experience with the summit, could not have addressed the key issues. That is why we are objected to the summit. Dialogue and not the monologue they were trying to put up can resolve the crises in the region.”

Bozimo however expressed his trust and that of the leaders of the region in the US fact-finding team.

“They have come to see things for themselves. And we believe they will take the feedback to their government who will then be in a position to advise the Federal Government in order to solve the current situation in the Niger Delta.”