From Femi Folaranmi, Yenagoa
Ijaw ethnic nationality has, again, shown its preference for self-determination, vowing to stop at nothing until it achieves self-determination for its people.
This was the resolution after an All Ijaw summit with the theme: The Nigerian State and the Ijaw Question, at the weekend, in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State.
The summit, organised by the Ijaw National Congress (INC) was attended by traditional rulers and political officer holders.
INC said the rewards the Ijaw nation had received from Nigeria for feeding and sustaining the country had been “consistent degradation, despoliation and destruction of our environment, fauna and flora with no remediation strategy”
Its President, Benjamin Okaba, who read the communiqué, said the Ijaws were dismayed by the refusal of the Federal Government to accede to the Ijaw ethnic nationality’s request for a paltry 10 percent of profit of the oil and gas proceeds thus prompting the Ijaws to rethink its relevance to the Nigerian state as a people.
Okaba said the Ijaws would continue to engage the Federal Government on its critical challenge as well as the enthronement of a new federal constitution that is without prejudice to their resolve to seek self-determination.
According to him, the Ijaws would employ all peaceful, diplomatic, non-violent and other tools of civil disobedience to pursue and actualise their right to self-determination as a distinct people of common historical and cultural affinity and geographical contiguity.
He said they they can no longer depend on Nigeria for the protection of their environment and, therefore, decided to have an autochthonous Ijaw environmental protection strategy to leave sustainable land for future generations.
“That the Ijaws occupy the most difficult coastal areas of the country that is blessed with resources to feed the Nigerian nation but remains ‘backward and poor’ 62 years after the Henry Wilkins report so describe it. We are not only poorer but better off than what rightly and naturally belongs to us.
“That the government of the federation has poorly and unsatisfactorily managed the inherent ethnic diversities resulting in neither hues and cries over marginalisation but ignited several separatists tendencies among some major ethnic nationalities.
“That the Nigerian federation has been an aberration as it does not conform to all known precepts of federalism which emphasises division of powers between the central government and the constituent units on a coordinated and independent basis.”