By Festus Ahon
UGHELLI—PRESIDENT-ELECT of the Niger Delta Youth Movement, NDYM, Mr Godspower Odenema, has charged President Goodluck Jonathan to take urgent steps towards massive development of the Niger Delta region. He praised late President Umaru Yar’Adua for creating the Niger Delta Ministry.

Odenema, who stated this shortly after his election as National President of NDYM, said late President Yar’Adua provided the direction and guidance of a new climate of peace in the region with the creation of the Niger Delta Ministry and granting of amnesty to the freedom fighters in the region.

Congratulating President Jonathan on his becoming the president of the country, Odenema prayed God to grant him the wisdom to move the country forward, even as he congratulated all Niger Deltans on the emergence of Jonathan to serve Nigerians at this time in the history of the country.

He appealed to the youths to take advantage of the amnesty programme offered by the Federal Government to meaningfully contribute their quota to the creation of the climate of peace for human and infrastructural development to take place in the region, adding, “on each of our shoulders is the burden of history. Are we the generation that will turn things around, or another in a long line of waste?”

Odenema urged youths in the region to “shun kidnapping, cult killing, pipeline vandalization, drugs, election rigging, political thuggery, violence and other social vices. There are no shortcuts to success but hard work and diligence.”

According to him, the maximum application of violence on hapless population for the attainment of one’s own advancement or comfort was evil, adding, “we must accept that the path to the future lies in the development of our minds.

We can only defeat poverty and our ignoble past by changing our minds and our attitudes.”
“Though we have been cheated, scorned, raped and desolate, but for how long are we going to lament? For how long would we weep?”