South-South governors to form regional security outfit ‘to check criminality’

The South-South Governors Forum on Thursday resolved to form a regional security outfit to check crimes and criminality in their region.
The forum’s resolution was made known by Governor Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta State when he addressed newsmen at the end of their meeting in Government House, Asaba.
According to Okowa, the governors agreed that the regional security outfit would help address the numerous security challenges in their respective states.
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.”
Okowa said that the forum 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.
“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 have been done in terms of documentation in the past five years. We have agreed to restart the commission with the headquarter in River State.”
He lauded Ambassador Joe Keshi, the Director-General of BRACED commission, adding that a lot of documentation had been done by the commission.
The governor said that the forum would have its next meeting in few weeks time in Port Harcourt when the commission would brief it on the modalities of operating the regional security outfit.
“We also discussed the issues of Federation Accounts Allocation. We agreed that the 13 per cent derivation fund should be deducted before the revenue derived from oil is shared.
“This 13 per cent 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,” he said.
Okowa said the governors also discussed issues pertaining to the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) and had asked that President Muhammad Buhari constitute the governing board immediately.
He said that NDDC was capable of developing the region through the execution of good protects rather than the pockets of projects currently being executed in the region.
The forum chairman said that the governors also agreed to set up a medical team to apply regional approach to check the incidences of Lassa fever and the Coronavirus.
“We took the decision that Commissioners for Health from the region will meet immediately to look into how to contain Lassa fever and also consider how to tackle the issue of coronavirus in case it extends to this region.
“At the moment, we do not have any known case of Covid-19,” Okowa said
The governors forum meeting lasted for about three hours.
Those in attendance were Okowa of Delta, Nyesom Wike of Rivers, Udom Emmanuel of Akwa Ibom,  Douye Diri of Bayelsa and Godwin Obaseki of Edo.