•Ojo Maduekwe Photo: Sun News Publishing

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The Federal Government has pleaded with the Niger Delta people to bury the hatchet and give it the opportunity to correct all the injustices and mistakes of several years to ensure development and ameliorate the citizens' plight.
Foreign Affairs Minister, Ojo Maduekwe, made the plea in Abuja on Thursday while addressing a conference on Nigeria and the Darfur peace process, facilitated by the Inter-ministerial Committee on Darfur in the ministry.

The minister, who also called on governments in the African sub-region to devise better ways of managing crisis, by engaging all the aggrieved forces and exhaust all the peaceful options, to prevent the kind of situation that is prevalent in Darfur, said Nigeria chose that approach to efficiently manage the crisis in the Niger Delta, which some people had mistaken for weakness on the part of the government.

Maduekwe said in the tradition of President Umaru Yar'Adua's open arms policy as a listening President, government was doing everything possible to listen to all and give peace a chance in the Niger Delta region so that the country would not go the way of Darfur.
“Governments in Africa should find a way of engaging forces that are aggrieved and try all the peaceful options to engage them. There's need to listen to people who are aggrieved, the communities that have a complaint.

This is why in the case of Nigeria, our president has gone out of his way to be a listening president especially on the matter of the Niger Delta. And everything is being done, even at the risk of looking weak, everything is being done to give peace a chance, so that we don't go the way of Darfur in Nigeria, so that government does not feel compelled in exercising its traditional responsibility to maintain law and order, so that government does not feel compelled to use a level of force that is going to be uncomfortable both to government and communities involved.

“One lesson this workshop can give us is that as we stay engaged in Darfur, through the gallant efforts of our troops, we have a responsibility both as government and the governed to maximize the opportunities for conflict resolution to ensure greater accountability on all sides, to ensure that funds that are meant for developments are actually used for development. And we hope that the people of Niger Delta will give this government an opportunity to correct injustices and mistakes that took many, many years,” the minister stated.

Expressing worries over the rate of attacks, kidnapping and other unlawful activities engaged in by citizens of the country, who had turned themselves into militants to wreck havoc in the region, Maduekwe said, “if people, who are coming to Niger Delta, to develop Niger Delta, by providing that very infrastructure which has being lacking for so many years, if they are going to be kidnapped, if they are going to be killed, then how do we get development into that place?”
Speaking on Nigeria's position on Darfur, the minister said the country had already committed so much into peace keeping operations in that Sudanese region and was not prepared to quit, adding that it had so many interests to protect.

“As you are aware, Nigeria has been in the vanguard of promoting global peace, security and stability particularly on the African continent. Nigeria's efforts at ensuring regional peace and security date back to the pre-independence era. Our effort in the Sudan therefore is an extension of Nigeria's continued commitment to peace in Africa and is in pursuit of her strategic interest,” the minister stated.