South Sudanese Speaker of the National Legislative Assembly James Wani Igga has called on the international community to support his four-month-old nation and also play a watchdog role.
Igga made the remarks last week at the opening ceremony of the late United Nations Secretary General, Dag HammarskjÖld’s sixth commemorative seminar at Africa University (AU).
He said friendly countries had a role to play in South Sudan for the country to fully utilise its resources and avoid becoming a failed state.
The two day seminar was held under the theme, South Sudan: The Road to Transformation and Nation Building.
“As an emerging nation we are in a gradual process of transformation where we should be conscious of where we are coming from, our current position and where we are going,” said Igga who was standing in for his President Kiir Mayardit.
“We don’t want war to happen again between North and South and we are appealing to the international community to ensure that we don’t fight again,” he added.
South Sudan is endowed with mineral resources such as diamonds, gold, uranium, copper, iron and oil among others, yet locals languish in abject poverty.
“The problem we have is that we cannot utilise our resources due to lack of capacity building. “In the struggle of South Sudan, for 21 years we were denied skills, education and experience and our own skills were to assemble and dissemble AK 47 riffles,” he added.
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South Sudan has literacy rate of 8% and Igga made an appeal to Zimbabwe to help the country in training its leaders and the general public.HammarskjÖld, died in a plane crash in 1961 in Zambia, on his way to DRC for peace negations.
Other luminaries who have graced the AU commemorative seminars include DRC President Joseph Kabila and former Mozambican leader Joachim Chissano.
