• Kachikwu advocates dialogue
By Oladele Oguntimehin and Oluwole Farotimi
RIVERS State Governor, Nyesom Wike, at a meeting with the military high command, yesterday, said nobody would be shielded from the operations against militants.
He assured the military that the people of Rivers State would support efforts to secure the area.
“As a government, we cannot support economic sabotage. What is going on is economic sabotage. Production is being negatively affected, with revenue of states dwindling. There are ways to channel grievances and it is wrong to do what will negatively affect the people of the region.” he said.
Wike said all Niger Delta governors opposed the use of violence to settle grievances and were billed to meet with Vice President Yemi Osinbajo on June 7 to discuss the security situation in the region.
In the military team were Chief of Defence Staff, General Abayomi Olonisakin; Chief of Army Staff, Lt. General Tukur Buratai; Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Ibok Ibas and Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Sadiq Abubakar.
Olonisakin said resur- gence in militancy in the Niger Delta is of serious concern to the military.
Meanwhile, Minister of State for Petroleum, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu yesterday asserted that the Federal Government will consider dialogue with Niger Delta militants currently bombing oil installations in the oil-rich region instead of rolling out military tanks against them.
Kachikwu, flanked by Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, disclosed this at an interactive session with a coalition of civil societies in Lagos.
The minister said the nefarious activities of militants are currently sabotaging government’s efforts to revamp the nation’s economy.
“Military barrels can- not stop or solve problem of militancy in the Niger Delta region. I will have to go back to my brothers; they are our brothers. We will go and dialogue with them,” Kachikwu said.
Speaking on why payment of subsidy was nolonger possible in Nigeria, he said the country lost over N5 trillion to subsidy in five years and explained that subsidy had to be removed from petrol because the policy was no longer sustainable as government is broke.
Dwelling on the economic situation in the country, Kachikwu point- ed out that ministers of the present administration do not have accommodation, adding that President Muhammadu Buhari cannot approve N20 million for ministers’ rent due to low government income.
On why the fuel queues disappeared immediately the government raised the pump price of petrol to N145 per litre, Kachikwu said: “Queues disappeared because people who had incentive to hoard were no longer hoarding and those who were in the business for hoarding sake left the business because there was no need to hoard. Again, we were having pretentious number of consump- tion for subsidy payment.”