Insurgencies: Nigeria needs peace confab not national confab – Agoro

National Chairman of the National Action Council (NAC), Dr Olapade Agoro, yesterday said only National Peace Conference and not the on-going National Conference can proffer needed solution to the nation’s insecurity problem.

Agoro, who stated this during a chat with journalists in Ibadan, lamented that going by the level of  insurgencies in the country it was glaring  that “Nigeria is presently on fire and needs the way out”.
According to the NAC leader, the selective mode of picking delegates into the on-going confab does not truly represent all interests in the country, adding that no positive solution to any of the nation’s problems can come from the confab which he described as a time-wasting exercise.

“Nigeria is presently on fire. You can’t discuss constitutional problems when the nation is at war with itself,” he said.
Agoro said those behind Boko Haram, Bakassi, Egbesu and other allied interest groups would definitely show up to formally express their grievances and the way forward by the time such a peace dialogue is convoked in the country.
“Who is representing the Boko Haram at the confab?  Whatever you say there is not binding on them. In the same vein, who is representing the Fulani herdsmen, the oil bunkerers, the kidnappers, the Egbessus, the Bakassis and the MASSOB at the confab?”
Agoro urged the government to without wasting time convene a National Peace Conference which would accommodate every Nigerian, saying,   “first and foremost, we have Nigerians in religious divides as you are either Christian, Muslim or a traditionalist.”.