130 NGOs write Tinubu, insist Itsekiri most marginalised oil-producing community

•PANDEF decries division in Nigeria, continuous neglect of Niger Delta

President Bola Tinubu has been asked to address the injustice faced by one million Itsekiri people in Nigeria. The Itsekiri are a minority oil-producing people in Delta State alleging national isolation fuelled by historic injustice.

In a letter to President Tinubu dispatched to Aso-Rock yesterday, the Nigerian Human Rights Community (NHRC), a coalition of 130 civil society and community-based groups spread across Nigeria, said Itsekiri people in Delta and Edo States produce some 30 per cent of Nigerian total oil output yet remain the most oppressed and marginalised oil producing community in Nigeria. The group said the indigenous environment of Itsekiri territories has been devastated due to years of oil exploration and a lack of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), which impoverishes the land, the people and the environment.

The statement signed by the group’s Secretary Abiola Adeleke, the Director of Publicity, Mr Taiwo Adeleye, the Northern Coordinator, Yao Abdullahi and the Niger-Delta Coordinator, Steven Ekong, said the Itsekiri have been subjected to the worst form of deprivation for many decades.

The group called on President Tinubu to listen to the pains and agonies of Itsekiri and should compensate them for enduring the hardship without resorting to violence or armed conflict adding that President Tinubu needs to prove that ‘diplomacy and peaceful agitation have rewards in Nigeria.’

This is as the Pan Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF) decried what it described as broad division in Nigeria with continuous neglect of the Niger Delta people.

The apex body in the region also berated the Federal Government for scrapping the Ministry of Niger Delta, a ministry they said the stakeholders fought hard to get without any form of notification or consultations.

PANDEF said such a decision was a total neglect of the region that sustains the country’s economy. These were part of the resolutions reached at the Special General Assembly organised by PANDEF in Port Harcourt where stakeholders in the region including former and present governors, senators, and national leaders attended.

The national leader of PANDEF, Chief Edwin Clark, said Nigerians should not be deceived by their leaders’ pretence. He lamented that with what is going on in the country, Nigeria is still divided among ethnic, religious and poverty lines.

He berated Nigerian leaders for taking the wealth of the Niger Deltans to run the country like their own private enterprises. Clark said the region is no longer docile and would not further tolerate such mistreatments from the leaders.

Also speaking, former governor of Akwa Ibom State, Victor Attah, said it was unfortunate for the Federal Government led by President Tinubu to scrap the Niger Delta Ministry they fought hard to get without notifying the stakeholders from the region.

In his address, the outgoing national chairman of PANDEF, Emmanuel Ibok Essien, described the assembly as very significant, which brought together stakeholders from different ethnic backgrounds to discuss regional destinies.