The Maritime University, one of the key demands of the Niger Delta militants will take off in October, Mr. Laolu Akande, the senior special assistant (media) in the Acting President’s office, said.

At a joint press conference with the media team of the Nigerian Presidency, Akande said the Vice Chancellor of the new university had been asked to bring a take-off budget for the institution.

According to him, the National Universities Commission (NUC) has approved a number of courses for the university.

Akande also announced that the ground breaking of the first set of the Modular Refineries would take place in August. The Federal Government conceived the idea of modular refineries to stop the further degradation of the Niger Delta by oil thieves and illegal refiners.

Akande also revealed that the report on the inter-ministerial committee on the Ogoni Clean-up would be released next week.

“Next week there is going to be a follow up meeting between the Acting President and the PANDEF.

“You will recall that last November the President held a meeting with the leaders of PANDEF where issues of Niger Delta development was discussed in which the Acting President embarked on the visit to the states of the Niger Delta.

“And since then the president asked that an inter-ministerial committee be composed led by the Vice President to look at all the issues, specifically using the PANDEF demand as the take off point.

“Regarding Ogoni clean up, they are also going to give an update of what has been happening. For instance, the coordinating team that was set up for the Ogoni clean-up conducted health impact assessment, they have done salt test, water test, they have hired a number of sons and daughters of Ogoni who are trained on environmental sciences as technical assistants, I think about 15 of them.

“In the next few weeks they are going to go back to Geneva where a holistic road map on the clean up itself will be concluded with the international partners.” (NAN)

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