Oba pledges enhanced welfare for royal fathers
• Friday, Sep 28, 2007

Newly appointed Chairman of Rivers State Council of Traditional Rulers, Sir Chukumela Nnam Obi 11, says an enhanced welfare of the state traditional rulers, the speedy resolution of the Niger Delta crisis and communal peace and harmony would form the plank of his leadership.

In an interview with newsmen in his palace at Omoku, the Eze Ogba noted that he was assuming office at a very critical moment in the nation’s life, and promised to discharge his duties with the deepest sense of responsibility and purposefulness.

He said having successfully discharged his duties as council chairman between 1994 and 1996, when directives were issued and executed with military dispatch, he would work assiduously to ensure communal peace and harmony, improved welfare for royal fathers, and the resolution of restiveness and conflicts within the state and the Niger Delta as a whole.

Insisting that democracy dividends can only be enjoyed in a peaceful, harmonious and convivial atmosphere, Sir Nnam Obi 11 hinted that he would partner with government at all levels on the quickest approach to poverty eradication amongst traditional rulers and the people of the state.

The council chairman remarked that problems of the state, which the Sir Celestine Omehia-led administration has set out to tackle with “sincerity and clear-minded objectivity,” constitute a major part of the Niger Delta question, which he says, revolves around the crisis of poverty and neglect.

Canvassing a way forward, the monarch said, those problems must be situated within the wider developmental crisis of the Nigerian state as a whole with a view to fashioning out an enduring and far-reaching solution to them.

He stated that such problems as unemployment, squalor, loss of traditional occupation, dispossession of natural right of ownership of oil by the Nigerian state, the total exclusion of local indigenes from most management functions of all sections of the oil industry, and the insensitivity of oil companies that have been harvesting stupendous wealth “must be seriously tackled now”.

Promising to put forward to government a new deal package, which he said, was being fine-tuned, the council chairman stated that the way forward can only be found in meeting the social and economic needs of the people in the form of enhanced welfare, relief and social security for the poor and under-privileged.

He, however, expressed confidence in Governor Omehia’s ability to meet both the material and moral needs of the people of the state, and pledged his unflinching loyalty to the government and people of the state.