Governors of the South South and South East held a crucial meeting on Sunday in Port Harcourt to harmonize their positions on the burning issues of power devolution and the establishment of State Police. The Governors who spoke to newsmen stated that the meeting became imperative since there was an emerging national consensus on the matters.
The Rivers state Governor, Nyesom Wike in his welcome address said;
As we go into the business of this meeting, let us be confident in the rightness of our course and clear in our considerations that we have been and would continue to be worse off without the will to exploit our political and economic complementarities to drive our ways into political, economic and social prosperity. Above all, we must continue to demand for the devolution of powers and resources to the states as well as the institutionalization of state police, now that there is national consensus on these issues.
From geo-strategic economic perspective therefore, there is an urgent need to establish and link our cities with railways and super highways; to provide viable and affordable flight services between our cities, and to ensure that cargoes are brought into the country and the regions through our seaports, jetties and ferry services as a veritable means of stimulating economic growth and social progress across our two regions.
“Also, we are all aware that economic growth and social progress are possible only in a peaceful and secure environment. And much as we try to tackle this menace in our respective states by providing the necessary logistic support to the security agencies, perceptions of insecurity are on the rise, doing significant damage to our investment climate thereby preventing reasonable inflow of direct foreign and local investment into the regions.” he added.
On his part, the Chairman of the forum and the Governor of Akwa Ibom State, Udom Emmanuel Udom called on the governors of the two regions to sustain collaboration in order to ensure socio-economic development. He lamented that federal presence in the regions was minimal and stressed that for the situation to change, stakeholders must work together.
