A Niger Delta group, United Niger Delta Energy Development Security Strategy (UNDEDSS), has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to embrace the amnesty programme granted to repentant Niger Delta militants by late President Umaru Musa Yar’ Adua in June 2009.

While blaming former president Goodluck Jonathan for failing to consolidating on the gains made by the Yar’Adua administration in the region, it said the use of sheer force will not achieve any lasting solution to militant activities in the region.

Addressing journalists in Lagos on Tuesday after an emergency executive meeting, Secretary General of the group, Mr. Tony Uranta, disclosed that the Niger Delta has “unanimously resolve to resist any further attempts by the federal government to toy with Nigeria’s future by continuing to maliciously deploy the military in the region or attempting to deploy sinister divide and rule tactics against the region’s key actors”.

“President Buhari is advised to personally and visibly head a holistic solution-seeking strategy that will prove his commitment to a robustly sustainable peace in the region, for there to be true unity, stability and progress in Nigeria”,? Uranta said.

He further decried what he called “the ongoing farce by too many of President Buhari’s political friends and Ministers, who are wasting time establishing so-called Contact Committees that will not resolve pertinent issues sustainably”.

According to him “There is no need to re-invent the wheel. All President Buhari has to do is return to the very successful Yar’Adua Template of 2009”.

To resolve the crisis, UNDEDSS disclosed that the President must personally broadcast to the nation an indefinite ceasefire to be matched by armed actors in the region, announce government’s commitment to the National Maritime University, Okerenkoko and the appointment of a savvy Special Adviser (Niger Delta Affairs) to the President among other things.

“If Buhari follows Yar’ Adua’s lead, there will be sustainable cessation of hostilities in the Niger Delta, and the nation will not be subjected to further losses in National Revenues or the crippling power shortfalls due to unavailability of crude and gas” the group said.

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