EMULATE THE MANDELA PICTURE OF GENUINE RECONCILIATION , DR. OBOKO TELLS BUHARI

President of the Federated Niger Delta Ijaw Communities, FNDIC Chief (Dr) Oboko Bello have called on President Mohammadu Buhari to emulate the late. South African leader, Nelson Mandela’s picture of genuine reconciliation.

According to the Niger Delta great activist, Mandela on assumption as first black President of South Africa immediately promoted genuine national reconciliation of blacks and his former white apartheid operators, stressing that this should be the path the Buhari administration must follow to attain a healthier country.

Dr. Bello gave the advise during a goodwill message at a peace summit organized by the coordinator of the Center for Peace and Environmental Justice, CEPEJ, Comr. Sheriff Mulade in Abuja weeks ago.

Linking the South African experience to the Niger Delta question, the prolific writer and one of the apex voice in the region said “For us in the Niger Delta, the Mandela feat proclaiming liberty to the captives is a call to realization of Jeremiah 1:10 which states: “See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to throw down, to build, and to plan”

In his words “For us, the working document of the Ijaw nation, the historic Kaiama Declaration, calls for Resource Control, Fiscal Federalism, Environmental Justice and Self-Determination for which the Ijaw/Niger Delta seek reconciliation with the Nigerian nation.

The Kaiama Declaration also empowers the Ijaw people to reclaim their creeks and salvage their humanity. This being so, FNDIC, equally fighting for Equal Political Space and Democracy brought about reduced hazardous corporate oil activities endangering environment of the Niger Delta, and causing unthinkable things to happen. By this, FNDIC succeeds in bringing necessarily sufficient pressure on Government resulting to dialogue and relative peace.”

Speaking further, he maintains that what the well meaning Niger Delta people expect of President Muhammadu Buhari is to genuinely consider the urgent need of reconciling the disenchanted Niger Delta into the mainstream of the Nigeria Polity like the Mandela’s example.

The Niger Delta pen tiger while quoting Martin Luther King Jr. Stated “Peace is not necessarily the absence of war; peace may mean the ability to secure reconciliation from war as Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal”