FG Extends Confab…Now To End In July

The Federal Govern­ment has extended the duration of the ongoing National Conference by four weeks. By this extension, the Na­tional Conference will end on July 5, 2014.

Prior to the extension, some delegates had argued that the three-month period allotted to the conference was not enough. They had pleaded with the leadership of the conference to make a passionate case on their be­half for the extension of the dialogue.

Confirming the extension of the conference to Daily Sun, a delegate from Rivers State, Ann-Kio Briggs said the extension was needed in order to give conferees ad­ditional time to elaborately deliberate on the issues at hand.

Briggs stated that the extension became neces­sary because of the World Economic Summit billed to hold in Abuja as from next week. She said dur­ing the summit, the confer­ence would be put on hold, thereby yanking off a good portion of the time allotted to it.

“We need more time to address all the issues that brought us to this confer­ence. We have been saying that the time was not go­ing to be enough. I am sure the conference Secretariat made a case and the Federal Government in their wis­dom decided to extend the date,” Briggs said.

It was however, unclear whether additional budget­ary allocation would be made in order to cater for the extension. The confer­ence Secretariat has not made an official statement regarding the extension and modalities put  in place to ensure a hitch-free delib­eration.

Meanwhile, the National Conference Committee on Devolution of Power yes­terday made a last-minute breakthrough on the con­tentious issues of resource control and exploration.

The chairman of the committee, Obong Victor Attah, who briefed news­men after their closed-door

deliberation, said there were a lot of compromises among southern and north­ern delegates.

He said the commit­tee members agreed in the principle that the Federal Government would carry states with natural resourc­es along when there was need for exploration .

Attah said the arrage­ment invovled: “Mines and all minerals, including oil fields, oil mining, geologi­cal surveys and natural gas, provided that the govern­ment of states where the mining activities take place shall be involved in matters relating to it.

“The Government of the Federation shall make spe­cial grants to develop mines and minerals in states where such resources are underde­veloped.”

Source:sunnewsonline.com