CHINEDU WOSU, YENAGOA
Former Commandant of the National Defense College of Nigeria, Abuja, Rear Admiral Thomas Lokoson (rtd), has admonished students from the Niger Delta region to shun militancy, pipeline vandalism and other social vices that could mar their future and endanger the environment.
The Rear Admiral gave the advice in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, while receiving an award of honour bestowed on him by the Niger Delta University Development Students’ Working Committee of the Students’ Union Government, in recognition of his remarkable philanthropy towards the institution.
Lokoson had in April 2014 donated 800 volumes of multi-disciplinary books to the NDU and instituted an award of N20,000 for each best graduating students in Political Science and Marine Engineering with 13 students as beneficiaries of his scholarship scheme.
In May 2015, Lokoson also donated medical equipment and consumables worth over N100million to the NDU. The items, imported from Canada, included beds, bedside drawers, incubators, wheel chairs, operating theatre equipment, drugs and syringes, among others.
He told the NDU students that militancy and oil bunkering had resulted in insecurity and massive pollution of the Niger Delta environment thereby impacting the means of livelihood and hampering development in the area.
The Naval officer urged them to take their studies seriously and resist the temptation of engaging in acts that are inimical to their academic pursuits.
The ex-defense college boss while thanking the students for the honour further charged them to be conscious of their political environment and also have passion for the development of their states, stressing that “nobody will come to develop your state for you”.
Presenting the award to Rear Admiral Thomas Lokoson (rtd), Chairman of the NDU-DSWC, Raphael Godfrey, commended him “for being a life-saver and promoter of scholarship in the Niger Delta”.
In his remarks, Dr. Philips Okolo of the Political Science Department of the NDU, thanked the students for honoring Lokoson and described him as “an encourager and selfless personality”.
