Pan-Ijaw Economic Summit 2024: INC urges council chairmen to award scholarships to students, promote culture

The Ijaw National Congress, INC, an apex socio-cultural organisation of the Ijaw people of Nigeria, has Thursday, urged local council Chairmen to award scholarships to students and promote Ijaw cultural festivals annually.

This significant role in advocating for the common Ijaw people and promoting development was played during the 5th Pre-summit Conference Consultative Meeting at Kayriott Hotel & Suites, Refinery Road, Warri, Delta State.

The Summit was themed: "Environmental Regeneration and Economic Sustainability" and was organised by The Azaiki Foundation.

In his remark, Professor Benjamin Okaba, President INC said, when a child's education background is rotten, anything you place on top will be rotten. He urged council Chairmen and Executive to award scholarships to students and set  strategic ideas in solving lack of teachers and promote Ijaw cultural festivals.

In his words: "In the local governments, you can lead the advocacy to sponsor ten students or more than, every year. We even lack teachers, so if councils can sponsor students to school with an agreement that if they graduate, they will serve our local schools by teaching if it's 3years, it will help a lot. That will help address the lack of teachers. When a child's educational background is rotten, anything you place on top will be rotten, so councils can help by sponsoring a set of students every year.

"We need to promote Ijaw cultural festivals annually. If we have 22 LGAs and each donates 4million for each council, it will equally help.

"Possibly, if the Ijaw council chairmen can come together and form a union, tagged: "Ijaw Shaping Council Forum," it will also help. Engaging our brothers from Lagos, Rivers, and others will provide a platform for interrogation behind INC leadership," he stated.

Okaba, while seeking for support, stressed that without the council Chairmen, INC is powerless. He added that INC is handicapped. "we can only talk and shout, we don't have the fund," he said.

Responding, Hon. Takeme Julius, the Chairman, Burutu Local Government Area, said: "The demands placed by the INC President for the local government to take responsibility on how we can give scholarships to people that will go to school and when they come back, at least,  attend to critical areas of our development, it's a good one.

"Those things should be simple matters, information is key in this matter, once we're able to aggregate all of these, bringing five-six million naira on regular basis to handle some of those projects will not be difficult the way people will think they're.

"With what I have seen here, if I go out of this place, maybe this weekend, I will try and make contact, across to all our people and nobody will get this message and say they're not interested in the development of Ijaw nation," he stated.

PEBNEWS reports that the summit had stakeholders across various sectors where all extensively addressed the grievances of the Ijaw people and provided sustainable practices that can drive economic growth and environmental regeneration.