Ijaw rejects six zonal structure

The Ijaw nation has proposed the restructuring of Nigeria along ethnic lines, rather than the current six geopolitical zonal structure.

The Chairman of the Ijaw National Congress, Joshua Benamaisia said that Ijaw people were spread across six states — Bayelsa, Rivers, Akwa Ibom, Edo, Delta, and Ondo — in two geopolitical zones — South-South and South-West.

Benamaisia said the Igbo nation were entirely within the South-East geopolitical zone, there was need for the Ijaw nation to have its own separate territory. Benamaisia said the prime aspiration of the Ijaw nation was the establishment of true federalism, where every ethnic group would control the resources in its area.

He said the Ijaw nation had suffered injustice under the current structure and would not drop its demand for the abrogation of the Land Use Act, and other laws that removed the rights of the people over their land and natural resources.

He said, “If not that our constitution does not recognise referendum, there would have been a referendum on how the country should be structured. Since that is not possible, a national conference should be convened so that people can decide how they can continue within the sovereignty of Nigeria. But the issue is after the national conference, the resolution will still have to be ratified by the National Assembly as that is what the law says.“If it is in places where the will of the people is respected, then we can be sure that the National Assembly will pass the resolution of the people. But here we cannot be sure of that.”Benamaisia said the Ijaw nation would keep pushing the right to control their resource until they get it. He said, ‘We are not interested in all these talk about revenue sharing formula, Our position is total resource control. It is only when people are allowed to control their resources that they would decide what to do with it.

“For instance, if you are driving on the East-West Road, the roads are so bad and we have resources here and it is used to develop other places. We don’t have infrastructure in our place; neither do we have federal presence in our area. So, we need to control our resource. It is our right.”Supporting Benamaisia, the spokesperson of the Ijaw Republican Assembly, Ankio Briggs, said Nigeria’s federalism was faulty in not recognising the different ethnic nationalities as units. “It is not that we do not accommodate other ethnic groups. The Ijaw people have suffered much injustice in this country that we are now looking at the country’s structure based on ethnic grouping. The Ijaw people in Ondo State, which is in the South-West are not strangers. So there is need for them to be associated with Ijaw people in the other states in the South-South.

A Cry from the Niger.