PRESS RELEASE
Excerpts Of The World Press Conference
At The Premises of Radio France Internationale, VON Broadcasting House, Ikoyi, 20th December 2008
Project IGALA, a think-thank of Nigerian Intelligentsia of Igala extraction, with a membership that cuts across six continents and a focal commitment to the overall development of the Igala nation through educational, infrastructural and economic interventions, addressed the World Press recently on dangerous slide to anarchy and violence in Kogi State.
Project IGALA notes with dismay the deplorable state of insecurity of lives and property in the state as evidenced in the recent orgy of violence and senseless killings that greeted the recent gubernatorial tribunal’s judgment in the state and with particular reference to the Lokoja ,Anyigba and Ejule disturbances which left many innocents dead.
Equally disturbing is the seeming helplessness of Security Agencies like the SSS and the Police, and the conspiratorial silence of the State Government in the unfolding macabre dance in the state. These have fueled the attractiveness of the declaration of a state of emergency in certain quarters.
Project IGALA condemns in no unmistakable terms, the resort to violence, thuggery and destruction of lives and property in order to settle political differences and the desecration of the core values of peace and neighbourliness of the Igala people on the altar of dangerous politics which currently thrives in the facilitation of militia groups and the recruitment of Kogi’s future leaders into bloodletting gangs.
We therefore call on President Umaru Musa Yar’adua to, as a matter of urgent national importance, intervene by way of increased military and police presence in Igala land and Kogi state in general before the region cascades into an orgy of unmitigated violence, thuggery and militancy of stupendous proportions.
Project IGALA remains resolute in its drive to achieve communal peace and prosperity through socio-economic engineering of the Igala society.
Signed
Musa Haruna Atayi Babs
Scribe Moderator
