South-South Governors agree on regional security outfit

South-South Governors Forum on Thursday March 5, announced the decision to launch a security outfit to check insecurity in the region.

Governor Ifeanyi Okowa who disclosed this at the end of a meeting with other Governors from the South-South region, said they agreed that BRACED an acronym for (Bayelsa, Rivers, Akwa Ibom, Cross River, Edo and Delta) Commission would work out the modalities for the security outfit.

He said;

“I am sure you know the five governors standing here out of the six governors in the South-South; We have just finished our governors’ forum meeting.

“Unfortunately, the Cross River Governor, Ben Ayade, was held back in Abuja and could not make it to the meeting.

“We took very far-reaching decisions and I must thank my brothers for attending this meeting.

“We took decision concerning the BRACED Commission which was established 10 years ago by our colleagues who were governors before we came on board.

“We have decided to restart the commission and ensure we provide the necessary logistics for it to function properly.

“The commission is to help us look into the issues of regional economy and the need to collectively develop our region instead of working as individual states.

“A lot has been done in terms of documentation in the past five years. We have agreed to restart the commission with the headquarters in River State.”

Okowa revealed that in their next meeting which is scheduled to hold in few weeks time in Port Harcourt, the commission would brief it on the modalities of operating the regional security outfit.

He added;

“We also discussed the issues of Federation Accounts Allocation. We agreed that the 13 percent derivation fund should be deducted before the revenue derived from oil is shared.

“This 13 percent derivation fund is supposed to be for the oil-producing states and we have agreed as governors to take up this matter at the appropriate level.”