AC Chief Blasts Governors Over N'delta Crisis

ACTION Congress chieftain and Rivers State governorship candidate, Prince Tonye Princewill, says former President Olusegun Obasanjo, and the immediate past governors of the country's oil and gas-producing states, are to be collectively blamed for the current state of insecurity in the Niger Delta.

The obviously angry AC who is still locked in a legal dispute with Celestin Omehia, at the election tribunal over his purported victory at the controvercial April 14 polls, said the past administration failed to rise up to the Niger Delta problems in tangible terms.

Princewill, who spoke to our correspondent in Port Harcourt, the Rivers state capital, on Tuesday, through his media consultant, Chief Eze Chukwuemeka Eze, alleged that Obasanjo and most of the former governors of the oil-producing states were pursuing ''personal benefits'' instead of the collective interest of the people.

According to him, ''the peoples of the Niger Delta had expected that those who held sway in the past eight years would have come up with policies and programmes aimmed at emancipating, alleviating and uplifting their living standard''.

Adding, he said,''currently, the major problem facing the new administrations in Rivers and the other oil-producing states of the Niger Delta is the issue of insecurity and hostage-taking. These acts which are alien to our people can be traceable to injustice, deprivation, maladministration, inept and visionless leadership, manipulations of our people that have been our lots in the past eight years''.

Princewill is claiming that if he succeeds in flushing out Omehia from the Government House, Port Harcourt, his (Princewill's) administration will use education to fight the worrisome scourges of insecurity in the state which he said are unacceptable to AC.

''As a progressive party,we are determined to proffer lasting solution to the problem insecurity in Niger Delta by provision of adequate and qualitative education to our people'', he said.

For him,''this strategy and approach becomes imperative considering the truth that education is the bedrock of any sustainable growth and development of any society. In this regard therefore our policy on education though will be all encompassing will be targeted mainly at ensuring that more Rivers people are giventhe opportunity to acquire science/technology education; and to ensure that the state educational system serves the need of the society by making the products of the system job creators and less of job seekers''.

Excerpts from the rest of the chat with Princewill went thus: ''we will upgrade facilities in all tertiary institutions in the state. We will renovate and refurbish primary and secondary schools in the state. We will make primary education compulsory and free. Tuition shall be free in secondary schools. All technical colleges in the state will be reactivated and equipped for effective vocational training. Special schools will be built for people with special needs.

The Rivers College of Education will be supported to play its role in improving the quality of our teachers. We will provide more infrastructural and learning facilities at the State College of Arts & Sciences, Port Harcourt .

The conditions of service and remuneration packages for all grades of teachers in our various institutions shall be reviewed. We will implement fully, the programmes of the Universal Basic Education law in the state.

We will encourage private and voluntary organizations to establish schools in accordance with government guidelines and regulations. We will ensure the regular and prompt payment of teachers, and of the pensions and gratuities of retired/retiring teachers. We will encourage adult/ migrant education in the remote areas of the state.

The path of educational re-awakening, to us is one that the Rivers people cannot afford to ignore. We will be honing the revival strategies for the educational sector as one of the pillars of our administration once we reclaims our mandate until the deed is done at the Elections Petition Tribunal let our people set their mind towards electing a new and credible government that will reshape our future and may our policy be our bond''.

ENDS

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