The Managing Director, Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Dr Samuel Ogbuku, has reiterated their commitments towards ensuring enhanced security operations in the region.
Ogbuku who disclosed this when the General Officer Commanding, 6 Division of the Nigerian Army, Major General Jamal Abdulsalam paid him a courtesy visit at the NDDC headquarters in Port Harcourt, recently, expressed the need for collaboration to ensure that the Niger Delta region remained peaceful.
However, Ogbuku tasked all the security agencies to be effective in the discharge of their duties and to rely more on intelligence gathering to nip security challenges in the bud; noting that for the security agencies to get all the needed assistance from them, it will entail engaging the youths in the region in various skills by training them to ensure that they were gainfully employed.
He went further to reveal that since it’s been obligated to the commission to support security agencies, it therefore, needed a secured environment to enable it effectively discharge its mandate as an intervention agency.
Responding, the General Officer Commanding, 6 Division of the Nigerian Army, Major General Jamal Abdulsalam, noted that the development of the Niger Delta region could not take place without peace.
He commended the commission for providing solar-power streetlights at the Army Barracks in the four states and appealed for more support in providing facilities in the barracks under the 6 Division.
Also in another development, the Commander of Nigerian Navy Ship, NNS, Pathfinder, Commodore Desmond Okechukwu Igbo, who in their interactive session with the NDDC Managing Director at the commission’s headquarters in port Harcourt, when he visited him, appreciated the commission for co-operating with security agencies working in the Niger Delta region to ensure peace; while maintaining that they would continue to protect the territorial integrity of the country and all its national assets.
He Charged the NDDC management to continue to support security forces in the region and promised to sustain the cordial relationship between the Navy and NDDC.
According to MD of NDDC: “I appreciate the security agencies for the job they are doing in the Niger Delta region because the region is relatively peaceful compared to other regions in the country. I thank the Navy for doing a good job and making sacrifices for our collective well-being.
“Development and security are intertwined because without security there will be no development and where there is security and development there will be prosperity. For the Niger Delta to be peaceful, we need both development and security. Incidentally, the foundation for development is security, hence there is need for collaboration between the NDDC and security agencies.
“We have always supported military formations and security agencies and we are willing to do more. Last year, we did a lot for the Nigerian Navy. Our contributions are aimed at enhancing and supporting what you are doing here in the region and also to complement what we are doing in the area of development.”
