Ijaw Youths Hail Avengers For Declaring Ceasefire

UDENGS ERADIRI-ERIC OMARE-IYCThe Ijaw Youths Council, IYC, has commended the Niger Delta Avengers, NDA, for declaring a ceasefire even as it urged the Federal Government to accept the militant group’s offer of dialogue in good faith.

The NDA, which has claimed responsibility for a spate of bombings of oil facilities in the Niger Delta, weekend, made a U-turn as it expressed readiness to dialogue with the Federal Government.

The Avengers, in a statement by its spokesman, Mudoch Agbinibo, however, warned that it would return to attacking oil and gas installations in the region if dialogue with the government fails.

Reacting to the development, the IYC in a statement issued Sunday in Yenagoa, the Bayelsa State capital by its spokesman, Eric Omare, called on the Nigerian Government to ensure that the dialogue deals with the core issues keeping the region “perpetually in a state of conflict”.

“The Ijaw Youth Council has always advocated dialogue as the means to the resolution of the Niger Delta crisis. As a result, we welcome the conditional declaration of ceasefire by the Niger Delta Avengers if it is actually from them. We call on the government, especially President Buhari, to take advantage of this ceasefire to aggressively dialogue with the people of the region to address the issues affecting the region.

“For the umpteenth time, we call for a bipartisan and sincere dialogue to resolve the root causes of the recurrent Niger Delta crisis. The dialogue should be issue-based and not to solve immediate problems and massage the ego of personalities. President Buhari must avoid listening to political hawks around him at the expense of the country’s unity and development”, the statement read.