By Nwachi Kingsley If you are passing through East-west road but deny your Eastern identity, you are living in denial. Before the ...
By Nwachi Kingsley
If you are passing through East-west road but deny your
Eastern identity, you are living in denial. Before the war Late Elechi Amadi
was a principal in Umuahia. The Ijaw agitation for marginalization is dated to
their administrative center at Ahoada – the people of Ahoada and Ikwere (which
they saw as Igbo’s back then)
The administrative center of Ijaws was Ahoada not Enugu.
Enugu later became the capital of Eastern region. The earlier Ijaw agitation
was not against Enugu but against Ahoada and Igweocha. The people of Ahoada –
Ikweres etc – seem to be more placed in civil services than Ijaw people.
When oil exploration started in Olobiri, Ijaws started
agitating for a better representative and infrastructural development because the
entire available infrastructure was around Ahoada and Igweocha (Which is called
Port Harcourt)
The agitation was boosted when the refinery was sited at
IGWEOCHA(Port-Harcourt). Isaac Boro and others were angry having written to the
then Eastern region government that on no account should the refinery be
located outside Olobiri where the oil is being drilled. They argued that siting
the refinery at Olobiri will bring infrastructural development to their people,
seeing that Ahoada and Igweocha (PH) is being developed while Ijaw was just a
swampy terrain with no meaningful infrastructure.
With the coal company in Enugu where the coal was located, and
the refinery which he presumed should be located in Ijaw land taken to Igweocha
(Port-Harcourt), Isaac Boro, a then undergraduate and student union president
of UNN formed his Niger-Delta volunteer force and subsequently declared Niger-Delta
republic.
In his declaration, he drew a red line against the
hinterland’s today’s Rivers State of Ahoada, Ikwere etc. He made it clear that
his Niger-Delta Republic is not for them. You can google his speech on the
internet and read for yourself.
He was arrested after 12 days of his declaration and sentenced
to death but Gen Ironsi instead chose to imprison him unlike Abacha to Ken
Wiwa.
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| Isaac Adaka Boro |
The question is, why didn’t Gen Gowon release him when he
came on board as the new head of state? Why did he wait till the civil war
broke out before he released him?
For the Use and dump tactics of Nigerian government, they
didn’t spare him either, in 1968 when the Nigeria government thought they have
used him to recapture Igweocha(PH) from Biafra troops, with fear that Boro and
his group might plan re-declaration of Niger-Delta republic again, they killed
him and disbanded his group who have aided them to work against Biafra. Mazi Nnamdi
Kanu once said “if you serve Nigeria you will come back in shame”
It was after the war that Ijaws took over Igweocha (Ph) and
chased out all Igbo speaking Ikweres, Ahoada and other hinterland river state
and forced them to change their names. Umualo became Rumualo, Umuigbo became Rumuigbo,
Nwike became Wike etc. it was in 1976 after the River State boundary was
defined that Omoku, Ndoni, Ahoada, Elele, Etche, Obigbo etc began to get sense
of belonging in river state.
Do you know that Igirinta people and other hinterland River
state were also included in abandoned property things? Yes the ijaws chased
them away too but they later reclaimed their properties when they denied their
“Igboness”
The ijaws inhumanly conditioned Igbo speaking part of River
State to deny their Igbo identity; in fact it was a law even down Omoku. Omoku even had to claim they are migrants of
Bini, a claim some still hold even after achieving their aim. The irony of it
all is that they have not cultural affinity to Bini; everything about them is
Igbo, including their language. What a world!
When Akwa-ibom was created, and the hinterland River State
became majority, the ijaw began their new face of marginalization agitation
which produced the now Bayelsa State as a homogeneous Ijaw State In 1996.
All having been said, those are in the past. We need to form
a united Biafra and win this war against our common enemy. Igbo man has no oil
block in Ijaw, yet the richest tribe in Africa. Senator Ben Bruce attested to
this on the flow of National Assembly In 2017. The international remittance of
Igbos abroad is enough to build any strong economy. That’s how Israel and even
China you see today built their economy.
IPOB has made it clear that Biafra will practice
confederation. There’s natural resources and accompanied human potential in all
spheres of Biafra territory.
Sometimes, am pressured to ask myself what makes these Ijaws
who needed to be in forefront of Nigeria breakup chose to sabotage the efforts
instead. My spirit keeps telling me that there’s something you people are not
telling us. Truth cannot be hidden forever. God is God and will always be.
#SupportBiafra Independence today
#Pray4Biafra!
Edited By Nelson Ofokar Yagazie
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