Facts emerged on Tuesday that President Umaru Yar'Adua had been holding secret talks with the Niger Delta militants, with a view to ending the long drawn crisis in the oil-rich zone.
The Special Adviser to the President on Communications, Mr. Segun Adeniyi, disclosed this to State House correspondents in Abuja during a question and answer session.
Adeniyi said the protracted nature of the consultations was responsible for the delay in holding the planned Niger Delta Summit.
According to him, the envisaged summit is a complete departure from the past, where participants presented papers without action flowing from the summit.
He said the planned summit would merely ratify already reached agreements with the militants at the ongoing meetings.
He said, The kind of Niger Delta summit that the President is planning is not the kind that we had in the past where people will come and present papers.
The Niger Delta summit the President intends to host is a summit where concrete agreement will be reached and that agreement will be reached after so many agreements would have been reached underground.
So many meetings and consultations are going on and the summit is to be the conclusion of all those meetings.
The President while discussing this morning said he never envisaged these negotiations will take this long, but I can assure you that so many things are going on so that once the summit holds, there will be firm agreement among all the stakeholders, and when I mean stakeholders I am talking essentially about the militants.”
On the much talked about declaration of a state of emergency in the energy sector, Adeniyi said YarAdua was waiting for the report of the Energy Council that was set up.
The report, he said, would be ready within the next few weeks, stressing that a state of emergency declaration would then follow.
Adeniyi said, But meanwhile, a lot of things are going on, series of meetings have been held. He has met with the Russian government who are interested in power sector in Nigeria and very soon the President will be going to Russia to meet with President Putin.
He will be meeting with the Chinese over the use of coal for electricity. A lot of achievements have been made but the power sector emergency will be declared when the report is ready because it is going to be all-encompassing and will state all the process, the funding the time and others.
The presidential spokesman said that a section of the media misrepresented the Presidents remarks at a judges conference, adding that he was never angry with electoral tribunals or judges over the rulings.
He said, One newspaper (not the PUNCH) came out the next day and said the President is angry with judges over tribunal rulings. And that is not true. I called the editor and he admitted that that was not what the President said.
I still have the speech. The President stands by everything he said. He praised the judges but in a situation like that it is better to state what you consider the home truth.
He was just advising them against playing to the gallery. It was a general advice that they should realise that whatever judgment comes out of the court for ill or goodwill, this government will abide by it.
The president knows what he said, and he is also happy with it because the people he addressed applauded what he said. What he said was in line with what the Chief Justice said.”
Adeniyi dismissed insinuations that the President was jittery over the outcome of the petitions against his election.
By Chiawo Nwankwo, Abuja
The Punch
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
