We must bring peace to Niger Delta — Sylva

The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, says for multinational oil companies to relocate their operational headquarters to the Niger Delta, there must be sustained peace there.

Sylva said this in Abuja yesterday when the Niger Delta Nonviolence Agitators Forum invested him as its patron and peace ambassador.

The minister said only peace would attract investors to the region.

“We must bring peace to the Niger Delta. It’s our duty to bring peace to the Niger Delta. Sometimes, we’re worried that investment opportunities are not coming to the Niger Delta, but we must realize that it’s our activities that’ll determine whether these opportunities will come or not.

“Right now, we’re saying that oil companies must move their headquarters to the Niger Delta.

“What we need in the Niger Delta more than anything else right now is peace and I believe that if there’s peace in the Niger Delta there’ll be prosperity. No investor would want to operate from far if there’s peace because it actually costs him more operating from a distance.

“So, for us, I believe that if we can bring peace to the Niger Delta, these investors will not talk much, the numbers will speak for themselves,” Sylva said.

The president resident of the forum, Wisdom Ikuli, said through Sylva’s “unquantifiable sacrifices”, over 30,000 ex-militants were disarmed and inducted into the Disarmament, Demobilization, Deradicalization and Reintegration initiative of the Presidential Amnesty Programme.