British High Commissioner to discuss herdsmen killings

The British High Commissioner to Nigeria, Catriona Laing, will on Tuesday (today) visit Imo, Anambra and Enugu States where she would engage with government officials and civil society groups.

During the three-day visit, the envoy would discuss Nigeria’s political settlement, governance and service delivery, farmer/herder disputes, relations between the state and federal government and other critical issues.

The Senior Press and Public Affairs Officer at the British High Commission, Chris Ogunmodede, disclosed in a statement in Abuja on Monday that this would be Laing’s first visit to the South East as high commissioner.

Speaking ahead of the visit, the envoy said she was excited by the visit to the region which she described as “a cradle of culture, education, trade, and investment.”

She stated, “I am excited to get a first-hand view of the strides the governments and leaders in Imo, Anambra, and Enugu are making in the development of their states.”

Meanwhile, the African Centre for Media and Information Literacy has said that young people must be actively involved in the social engineering process, noting that they also needed to be well-grounded in the theory and practice of social transformation.

Addressing students in Abuja at a political roundtable with the theme, ‘Democracy and political mobilization: The role of students and youth and student radicalism and the Nigeria project: A critical analysis of the students’ union movement in Nigeria,’ AFRICMIL Coordinator, Chido Onumah, said the nation needs a social transformation that is people-oriented, progressive and beneficial to the masses.

He said Nigerian students had been in the frontlines of effort to change unequal social relations in the country, dating back to the mid-1920s with the creation of the West African Students’ Union which was partly pioneered by Nigerian students in London who fought against colonialism and the emancipation of Africans.

Onumah explained that the National Union of Nigerian Students inherited the same idealism from WASU and reinforced its position as a platform of change and political consciousness.

He stated, “In the 1970s, NUNS enjoyed broad support from radical intellectuals in academia. It took an active interest in developments in the polity. For instance, under the leadership of Segun Okeowo, a student at the University of Lagos, NUNS was directly involved in national politics for proper funding of education for Nigerian students.”