We join millions of Nigerians in hailing your courageous and peace-encouraging decision to meet, last Saturday, with the MEND-appointed Aaron Team led by Admiral Okhai Mike Akhigbe, and comprising distinguished Nigerians like Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, retired military strategist, General Luke Kakadu Aprezi and Architect Denzil Amagbe Kentebe.

Dear Fellow-Nigerians,President Umoru Musa Yar’Adua may go down in history as the just Pharaoh that “facilitated” the emancipation of the Niger Delta [something the Balewas, Babangidas, Abachas, and Obasanjos tried, in vain, to achieve] by simply listening to the true representatives of the region’s peoples and having the political courage to address the fundamental challenges of the region…or, at least, that is what we are all praying that he does…if the hawks in his kitchen cabinet will let him!

Dear President Yar’Adua,
This writer broke his writing-milk-teeth working with a little-sung icon of the Nigerian press, Christopher Maduaburochukwu Okolie; the young man who dared to import classy full-colour gloss into the realm of Nigerian media (which was hitherto dominated by the “dreary” but popular Spear and Drum magazines) with his revolutionary “NEWBREED” magazine (with the delectable Ms. Gloria Rhodes gracing its debut 1972 cover).

Prince Tonye Princewill is a personable young man that has the ability to charm people even when he is telling them bitter truths, as all other members of President Umoru YarAdua’s Niger Delta Technical Committee, on which he served, learnt…sometimes to their chagrin

The devil can cite scriptures for his purpose”…William Shakespeare

Dear Fellow Nigerians,
At a recently concluded socio-cultural event in Odi, Bayelsa State, Dr Timiebi Koripamo-Agary, who is one of the most trusted, most seasoned and most professional federal civil servants, and who is also a member of the Federal Government Committee on Amnesty and Rehabilitation, was quoted as saying: ‘It is time now for those who have carried arms for whatever reason to drop them and embrace peace, so that real peace and development can come in for our people.

For instance, the Ijaw territory was the center of commerce – renown for its trade in ivory, palm oil, and other natural resources. It was also a center of the African Atlantic slave trade. And for a period in its history, it had an independent diplomatic relations with European powers.

Today, we dedicate our column, POSITIVE LETTERS, to a very gerrmane communication penned by the now renowned Tompolo to President Umaru Yaradua. Shalom

You are probably cursing being born into this nation-space called Nigeria; a land where truth is turned on its head and even ministers of justice are at the forefront of promoting wholesale injustice with impunity…a land of the institutionalization of the twin evils of corruption and violence, even in the supposedly hallowed courts where God is worshipped, as we are daily reminded in the north’s regular orgies of religious violence.

You are probably cursing being born into this nation_space called Nigeria; a land where truth is turned on its head and even ministers of justice are at the forefront of promoting wholesale injustice with impunity…a land of the institutionalization of the twin evils of corruption and violence, even in the supposedly hallowed courts where God is worshipped, as we are daily reminded in the north’s regular orgies of religious violence.