A women group in the Niger Delta, the Ijaw Women for Peace Movement (IJWPM), has sent an urgent Save Our Soul message to the Managing Director of Tantita Security Services Nigeria Limited, High Chief (Engr.) Kestin Pondi, and to the Administrator of the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP), High Chief (Dr.) Dennis Brutu Otuaro, with a passionate appeal for economic empowerment support for members of the association.

The IJWPM, led by its President, Mrs. Juliet Ebis, during a meeting with the press on Monday, June 1, in Effurun, Delta State, said many of its members are unemployed and struggling to meet up with basic needs due to the current hike in the cost of living.

The women, who described Pondi and Otuaro as respected leaders, revealed that the decision to direct their appeal to the two illustrious Ijaw sons is in recognition of their past interventions to the less privilege in society that lifted many out of poverty

They IJWPM while also lamenting that they are suffering, said that as Ijaw women with respect for customs and cultural values cannot degrade themselves under the guise of trying to survive.

They said, "We are proud to have you (Pondi and Otuaro) as our Ijaw leaders who have made us proud by the good works you are doing, and we are hoping to also get a helping hand from you, knowing you have bailed so many out from poverty.

“We have you as fathers that can help us. Why should we go to others? As Ijaw women, it would be an abomination for us to resort to desperate means for survival,” they confessed.

The members of the Ijaw Women for Peace Movement appealed to High Chief Pondi and High Chief Otuaro for direct engagement with the two leaders as targeted empowerment programmes would ease household burdens and improve education for children in the region.

"We are feeling the economic impacts as mothers and wives that are responsible and have a sense of duty to contribute our quota to cater for our children.

“We plead: 'please call us, help us.' You would be helping the future, because it would be a helping hand with which we can also extend to paying our children’s school fees, health care, feeding among others,” they pleaded passionately.

While TSSNL is a security firm that handles pipeline surveillance in the Niger Delta region, but through its corporate social responsibility has made its landmark in welfare, jobs and economic empowerment, the PAP on the other hand is an intervention agency of the federal government that focuses on educational and vocational training and reintegration initiatives for beneficiaries from the region.

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