Dikio tasks INC leadership on new approach for N’Delta development 

Interim Administrator of the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP), Col. Milland Dixon Dikio (rtd.) has appealed to the newly inaugurated leadership of the Ijaw National Congress (INC) to adopt new approach in its agitation to attract development to the Niger Delta region.

Dikio, who spoke in Yenagoa, during the inauguration of the new President of INC, Prof. Benjamin Okaba and the National Executive Committee, said it was time Ijaw elders embraced a development-focused mindset to ensure greater transformation of the region.

Congratulating the INC on his successful election, he pledged to partner with the congress for positive advancement of the Niger Delta, describing the inauguration as the dawn of a new day in Ijaw land.

He insisted that the INC should adopt a new thinking and a new approach of seeking to achieve its desires through strategic collaborations, adding that agitations in the region should move from the streets to boardrooms with a view to rewriting the narrative of the Niger Delta.

He declared that the era of servicing contractors and their cronies was over, insisting that the PAP would no longer patronise contractors at the expense of owners of the programme, which are the ex-agitators, just as it would no longer fund the scholarship of students in areas that are not of comparative advantage to the region.

Dikio stated this in Yenagoa, the Bayelsa State capital at the weekend during a meeting with the leadership of the first phase of PAP.

He decried the situation in which contractors gulp 85 per cent of funds accruing to the PAP, while those the programme was instituted for were left with a fraction, which he lamented, was hardly enough for training and empowering them.

On his part, Speaker, Bayelsa State of House of Assembly, Hon. Abraham Ingobere, applauded Dikio for his leadership style since he assumed office, saying he (Dikio) deserved commendation for his prompt payment of monthly stipends to ex-agitators, stressing that the beneficiaries were happier for his efforts.