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Ijaw seek global support, remember Isaac Boro in UK
IJAW leaders at the weekend added a global dimension to efforts to improve the lot of their people as they inaugurated a 23-member European Council of Ijaw in Diaspora in the United Kingdom (UK).

The inauguration was performed by the President of Ijaw National Congress, Prof. Kimse at an event that also served to mark the 2007 Isaac Boro Day.

A statement by Paul Odili, a media aide of Delta State Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan, listed those present at the event as including many top Ijaw and Niger Delta leaders and the representative of the Vice President Goodluck Jonathan - Transportation Minister, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke - who read his statement, at the event held at The Coliseum, High Road, IIford, Essex.

Others in attendance were Governor Timipre Sylva of Bayelsa; Funkekeme Solomon, Deputy Speaker of Delta House of Assembly; Chief Tele Ikuru, Deputy Governor of Rivers State; Chief Peremobowei Ebebi, Deputy Governor of Bayelsa; and former leaders of Rivers State- Chief Ada George and King Alfred Diete-Spiff.

The Vice President in his speech condemned kidnapping and destruction of oil facilities in the Niger Delta as a departure from what Boro stood for and urged a rethink of that strategy. "I have noted very sadly the emergence of a gun culture whose result is kidnapping of children, grandmothers and foreigners. These acts present our grievances in a negative way. Boro, in his 12-day revolution exhorted his lieutenants not to 'harm the foreigners among us' and to protect our people especially children and our mothers. Today, some hide under Boro's canopy to commit atrocities once unheard of in our communities."

In his address at the occasion, the representative of Governor Uduaghan, Solomon, paid tribute to Boro, recalling that he was the first Niger Delta leader to use the phrase "resource control," describing him as the father of the modern Ijaw nation.

"The man Adaka Boro as I have come to understand was deeply dissatisfied with the state of things in the Niger Delta. He could only see neglect all around him. In the environment itself, he saw danger. He cried out, but no one would listen. His achievement was more in the realm of drawing attention to the danger in neglecting the area that produces more than 90 per cent of the national wealth over the years. Today, it can be said that he commands a whole chapter in the history of Nigeria," Solomon said.

Governor Sylva, in his tributes said his government as part of its contribution to the immortalisation of Boro was building a park in his memory. He said part of the legacy of Boro's struggle was bearing fruit with the election of an Ijaw man as the nation's number two citizen, a position that shows the Ijaw are 'a heart beat away from the number one.'

Earlier, Okoko while inaugurating the council reminded the audience that the event of the day became inevitable because the Ijaw needed to let the world know about their plight. "What we are doing today which began with the inauguration of the U.S. council in December is part of our strategy of 'internationalisation' of the Ijaw struggle, which is today completed with the setting up of the European Council. This step became important because we believe that the National Assembly will have difficulty in reviewing the Constitution to restructure the country, because of vested interest. Thus, setting up these councils in the U.S. and Europe is part of our strategy of extending our case outside Nigeria.

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Clark, Niger Delta overlord?

Monday, October 08, 2007 Ochereome Nnanna
People and Politics

HIS name rings a bell all over Nigeria and beyond, for reasons that will be clear shortly. He is called Chief Edwin Kiagbodo Clark, a former Minister for Information and cinema chain proprietor. He is self-acclaimed (and also acclaimed by others) as a foremost Ijaw leader. He would tell you, without batting an eyelid, that he is not a nationalist but an Ijaw man. He said so at a public forum in December 2001 when an international seminar was organised to flag off the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) in Port Harcourt, Rivers State.

He is an excellent propagandist who masterfully reads the auguries with a view to striking where it tells the most. He is big, bold and brash, with all the usual character trappings that go well with warlords anywhere. In recent times, he has established a reputation (rightly or wrongly earned) which portrays the notion that unless he puts his stamp of approval on any matter concerning the Niger Delta, it cannot go forward. If it insists on going forward without him, there will be trouble. Invariably, the Ijaw agenda, defined by him and those who believe in it, must take the front burner in South-South, Niger Delta and Nigerian affairs, with him driving it. Otherwise, there will be trouble.

Let me first of all state what I understand to be Chief Clark’s vision of the Ijaw agenda in modern Nigeria. He is of the belief that an Ijaw warrior, Adaka Boro, being the first to initiate an armed struggle for self-determination of what is today known as the South-South or generically Niger Delta, the creation of the geopolitical zone is a trophy for the Ijaw. He, like earlier Ijaw leaders such as the late Harold Dappa Biriye and former Governor Melford Okilo, were also convinced that old Rivers State and its capital Port Harcourt, with the mainstream Igbo expelled from its political control, was a political concession to the Ijaw. Nothing for the Ogoni, Ikwerre, and others.

AND after personally leading the Ijaw in the Warri crisis of 1996, which ended a few years ago, and in which his side did not exactly lose, he believes that the Niger Delta buck stops on his table. Anything to the contrary will not happen in peace. And being the most visible Ijaw elder/leader, he has positioned himself as the clearing house between the Federal Government and the militants of the Niger Delta who, to all intents and purposes, are mainly Ijaw youth. In fact, the nomination of former Governor of Bayelsa State, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan as the nation’s Vice President instead of other more prominent South-South politicians is something Clark would like to be seen as a concession to him by former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

Let us briefly mention a few instances where Clark fought to scatter anything that did not go his way. When in 2002 Chief Matthew Mbu and retired Commodore Okoh Ebitu Ukiwe, formed the Council of Southeast and South-South (COSESS) the strategy was to forge an alliance between the two neighbouring zones for greater political and economic clout within the federation. With prominent Ijaw leaders such as King Alfred Diete-Spiff and Ijaw National Congress (INC) President, Professor Kimse Okoko, among others as enthusiastic participants, it was agreed that the two zones should make a joint bid for the presidency.

Clark rallied the likes of the late Marshall Harry to scuttle it in preference for a “traditional alliance” with the North.Later on, towards the Obasanjo Conference of 2005, another alliance was forged between the South-South People’s Alliance (SSPA, the umbrella of all ethnic groups in the South-South) and the Igbo of Southeast after meetings in Port Harcourt and Owerri towards 2007. Clark, fearing that his Ijaw agenda and personal position would be subsumed, scuttled it with counter-meetings of his own. Eventually, the SSPA went moribund due to this and the confusion that came in the wake of Obasanjo’s decision to single-handedly produce his own successor.


Clark was particularly vocal when former Governor Peter Odili’s prospects as a presidential aspirant shone brightly. In order to discredit Odili (who, like a typical Rivers State indigene proclaims himself a “Rivers man”), Clark launched a vicious campaign labelling him “an Igbo man”. To him, the Igbo were using Odili to claim the South-South presidency through the back door! In his native Delta State, he was on record to have initially given his blessing to the gubernatorial ambition of Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan. Suddenly, he made a U-turn and started a campaign against Uduaghan’s candidature because he was Itshekiri and former Governor Ibori’s cousin. Up till date, he keeps heaping unstubstantiated allegations against the young state chief executive and his government, his obvious motive being that Uduaghan is not his tribesman.

Only a few weeks ago, Clark led a delegation of Ijaw chiefs to President Umaru Yar’ Adua, calling for a state of emergency in Rivers State because, according to him, the violent criminal crisis in the state called for it. He, again, without substantiation, claimed that some Rivers State government officials were “cultists”. The President told him to put his allegations in writing. Till date we have not heard about anything done to that effect. His opponents in Rivers accuse him of mounting this campaign to get through a state of emergency what he failed to secure through the ballot box. They also allege that his is the moral force behind the militants holding the nation to ransom in the Niger Delta creeks.

CLARK'S activities are premised on the propaganda that the Ijaw are the majority tribe in the Niger Delta, a claim that does not seem to be supported by true fact. What is true is that the Ijaw territories place them in great advantage in our oil affairs in that you cannot sell the oil without passing through them. Some Ijaw intellectuals such as my friend Owei Lakemfa, far back in 1996 claimed for the group a healthy 10 million population. But the census of 2005 had only 1.3 million for the only all-Ijaw state, Bayelsa. The Ijaw groups, according to figures, make up about 20 per cent of the population of Rivers and Delta States. A paper released by the Orashi People’s Convention (of Rivers) on August 29th 2007 notes that of the 185 local government areas in the Niger Delta created by law, “the Ijaws are traceable to only 18 of these LGAs”.

The question is: How can such a minority among dozens of other minority groups claim to be the new “majority”? Anybody can make empty claims. Asserting it is something else, which is what Clark is clearly doing and being taken seriously in some quarters. This is creating pockets of disquiet and growing disenchantment among other groups in the zone. In any case, the very extremely splintered ethnic diversity of the Niger Delta does not recommend for it politics of extreme ethnic domination by any of the groups. Ethnic politics should wisely be restricted to aggregation of the interests of each group in the context of the wider Niger Delta community.

Any domineering posturing by any of the groups is asking for trouble from the others. You cannot very well fight off Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba majority dominance only to assert yourself as “the new majority” out to dominate your peers unless you are being clever by half! Where is the justice? Where is the principle?

HAPPILY, the younger generation of Ijaw leaders – including the youth who initiated and are sweating out the struggle, do not peddle the same ethnic conquest mentality. The INC and Ijaw Youth Council (IYC) have conducted themselves more urbanely by placing themselves on the same equitable pedestal with their peers such as the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP) and similar groups for the Itshekiri, Urhobo, Ikwerre, Orashi, Efik, Ibibioa, Edo, Anioma, Isoko, and many others to whom the South-South is home. That is the only way collaboration towards common goals is possible.

Even Asari Dokubo’s Niger Delta Volunteers Force (NDVF) and the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) have prudently de-emphasised overt tribalism, opting for the zonal umbrella approach. Dokubo has owned up to the fact that the agitation for his freedom was mounted by all Nigerians, not just Ijaw. Which was why he recently declared: “we don’t have to be unjust to others when we are fighting against injustice”.

The youths of the Niger Delta, including the Ijaw Youths, have shown far greater wisdom, vision and courage than their elders. You cannot grab for yourself what belongs to you and others. The confederal or umbrella approach to the struggle will surely prevail over the archaic illusion of “new majority” out to dominate others. The youth are the real overlords of the Niger Delta!

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