The Eastern zone of the Ijaw Youth Council, IYC has rolled out it’s development blueprint.
Speaking during the Economic/Empowerment, Security and Peace Summit in Port Harcourt at the weekend, the chairman of IYC in the zone, Comrade Peter Timothy Igbifa enumerated the blueprint as follows: to unify all Ijaw clans in Rivers and Akwa Ibom States, to facilitate employment and empowerment of Ijaw people through collaborations with companies, governments, corporate entities among others, to help provide a working relation with relevant stakeholders in a bid to address concerns of pollution and environmental degration in communities of the Eastern zone, to facilitate peace building and co-ordinate security in all Ijaw clans of Eastern Zone, to be the store house of Ijaw relics, literature and artifacts, to facilitate increase in government presence in and around Ijaw communities, to monitor the conceptualization, design and implementation of projects and programmes of governments, companies, and other corporate organizations in our communities, to provide various professional support to Council Committees and Community Development Committees (CDCs) amongst others.
According to the chairman, the IYC is a civil, socio-cultural and political right organization in Nigeria that was founded in 1998, saying that the Ijaw people are fighting for two things namely: political and economic freedom.
His words: “By God’s divine intervention, we have gotten political freedom as we are today privilege to have the president, our son and God sent father, President Goodluck Jonathan as the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. What we are now seeking for is how to use the political freedom to get the economic freedom”.
He maintained that the purpose of the summit was to address the alarming level of poverty, neglect and impunity on the side of government and the various corporate entities in the zone.
Comrade Igbifa expressed hope that, the summit would address issues bothering on peace and security in the zone. ###
