LAGOS APRIL 15TH (URHOBOTODAY)- Pro-national Conference Organisation (PRONACO) Chieftain and delegate to the ongoing National Conference in Abuja, Veteran Olawale Okunniyi has admonished the National Conference to raise a strategic intervention team to explore the possibility of isolating issues generating violent bloodletting and other forms militancy across the country
Okunniyi, while condemning the bomb blast which claimed several lives in the early hours of Monday at Nyanya, Abuja on the floor of the National Confab yesterday, said it is high time the Conference lived up to its real essence which is to negotiate and neutralize political discontent throwing up violence and bloodletting in the country.
In a statement signed by PRONACO Special Assistant on Media Matters, Mr Temitope Shitta –Bey made available to URHOBOTODAY an online medium, Okuniyi said since all shade of interests, mandates and diverse experiences which can empathise with issues bothering on insurgency and militancy are represented at the confab it may be instructive and expedient for the conference to help negotiate the end of the bloodletting and violence in the country.
“Time is of essence, the country by what we have witnessed so far is at war with itself. The country is sitting on a keg of gun powder. The issues propelling insurgency and militancy in our land are purely political and economic in nature and therefore require more political solutions than military.
The ongoing National Conference is expected to serve as a political clearing house and conflict management mechanism for the country and therefore should be utilized most dynamically to negotiate and secure national stability and constitutional sanity for the country as it is evident that this is the best government can do given the present circumstance.
The PRONACO delegate however said that the national confab should not be run mechanically like seminar, summit or workshop for formulating national policies but as a real family negotiation for national consensus.
He said the conference must be process led and peoples’ driven to achieve political stability and credible constitution for the agitated peoples of Nigeria. “This confab certainly needs every support and ample time to save the country from its deep rooted animosity and present precipice”
He said if the ongoing confab fails to arrest the growing tension and horrendous bloodletting among political parties and diverse interests in the country before the 2015 elections, the country may be forced into a most explosive season of all times, capable of signalling of Nigeria.