YENAGOA — DETERMINED to position the Ijaw nation to aspire to the highest office in the country, a Bureau of Ijaw Affairs is to be established to complement the Ijaw National Congress (INC) effort to coordinate and tackle the challenges facing its people at home and in the diaspora.
Governor of Bayelsa State, Chief Diepreye Alamieyeseigha who disclosed this at the second meeting of the Ijaw Interactive Assembly in Yenagoa weekend, however, urged the people to get their strategies right and formed a vibrant and realisable political agenda.
Chief Alamieyeseigha lamented that the Nigerian nation has not extended equity and justice to the Ijaw nation in the spirit of true federalism, adding that the Ijaw must strive to come up with accurate ideas and suggestions which could be fashioned into a position paper for Ijaw to articulate and project.
The host governor decried the non-challance of the Ijaw to their civic duty, noting that it was one factor that has continued to weaken the philosophy of the people and reduce them to the status of onlookers.
"As a people, we have come to be recognised as the single stabilising factor for the choice of leadership in Nigeria but unfortunately we have been consistently ignored in the overall political equation of this conutry. The reason is simple; we are not as united as we should be. The absence of a common voice of opinion on matters of great national concern has been detrimental to our existence as a people and it is time to speak with one resounding and undeniable voice of authority”, he said.
According to him, the Ijaw language has received the stamp of approval as a major language and urged the people to develop it into text materials for use.
Also speaking, chairman of the occasion, Chief Edwin Clark noted that the Ijaw have been sidelined for long and stressed the need to galvanise the people for the actualisation of the struggle.
In his remarks, the Ijaw National Congress (INC) President, Prof Kimse Okoko, stated that members of the steering committee are trying to incorporate the decisions of the previous All-Ijaw Conference, the issues from the meetings as well as the opinion of various experts in Ijaw nation towards producing a concrete paper for the Ijaw nation.
