JUST IN: Delta Based Rights Group Blows Hot Over Itsekiris Land Ownership Claims, Says Warri Belongs To All Its Tribes And Not To A Tribe Whose Throne Is Built On Falsehood And Deceitfulness -

By Esther David

PRESS RELEASE

PUTTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT: WARRI BELONGS TO ALL ITS TRIBES – LET NO MAN LIE AGAINST THE LAND

Concerned Indigenous Stakeholders of Warri Federal Constituency

“A lie may travel far but the truth will always rise like the tide that sweeps the delta clean.”

It has become necessary once again to speak not with anger but with clarity of conscience and to put the records straight before the entire nation and the watching world. The Itsekiri there outburst of distortions and colonial hangovers, has continued to push a false narrative of overlordship, claiming ownership over all lands and people in Warri. This must end now.

Let the world hear us and let the government take note:
Warri is not the property of any one tribe.
It is the ancestral homeland of three distinct and sovereign peoples, the Ijaws, the Urhobos and the Itsekiris. No tribe is lord over another. No throne rises higher than the spirit of justice and equity.

THE ITSHEKIRIS ARE NOT ABORIGINAL TO WARRI.

They are not the first people of the land. They came as strangers, as migrants and were received in peace by the original and indigenous peoples of the region, the Ijaws and the Urhobos.

We harboured them. We gave them space to survive. Long before Olu Ginuwa was said to have arrived from Benin around 1480, the Ijaws were already settled across the creeks and inland waterways of what is now called Warri. Our ancestors fished its rivers, lived on its islands, buried their dead in its soil and worshipped their gods long before the Itsekiris came with their borrowed tongue and Edo-Yoruba mixed ancestry.

The Isaba Kingdom, Diebiri, Ogbe-Ijoh, Gbaramatu, Egbema, Iduwini and other Ijaw clans had already established thriving settlements, governance systems and socio-economic structures. We were here before them. That is a fact of history, not of propaganda.

We welcomed the Itsekiris not as slaves or tenants but as fellow human beings seeking refuge. We gave them room to grow and we lived side by side until they turned around and started claiming what they were given out of kindness as their ancestral inheritance.

Let it be known: hospitality is not submission. Shelter is not surrender.

YOU CANNOT SUMMON THOSE YOU DO NOT RULE

We live in a kingdom where kings summon their subjects, not strangers. Yet the Itsekiri monarchy continues to carry itself with the delusion of being overlords over the Ijaws and Urhobos.
Let it be known:

The Olu of Warri has no customary, constitutional or cultural authority to summon or preside over any Ijaw or Urhobo territory or community.

The Ijaws are under the authority of their own kings, the Pere of Gbaramatu, the Pere of Ogbe-Ijoh, the Agadagba of Egbema, the Pere of Diebiri, the Pere of Isaba, and others.

The Urhobos likewise have their own sacred institutions and autonomous traditional rulers.

We are not subjects of any Olu. We never were. We never will be.
This belief of Itsekiri overlordship is a colonial relic, carried forward by those too afraid to face the truth of today.

THE KINGSHIP BUILT ON COURTROOM PAPER AND COLONIAL PARDON

The claims of the Itsekiri kingdom are built on a paper empire, not living history. The same colonial agents who oppressed our fathers handed over lands to their collaborators, not based on justice but on manipulation, favoritism and imperial convenience.

The truth is that many of the court judgments often quoted by Itsekiri elites:
Were held in their absence, without Ijaw or Urhobo participation.

Were grounded in colonial bias, not indigenous land law.

Were contested in later years, many of which have been either overturned or ignored by higher courts or state actions.

The world should not be deceived by the noise of courtroom victories won by exclusion, silence and fraud.
Truth does not rest in a gavel. It rests in the soil, in the memories of our elders and in the living presence of our people.

FACT: THE ITSEKIRIS ARE A MINORITY IN WARRI TODAY

It is on public record and even admitted by Itsekiri leaders like Amaju Pinnick in a live broadcast that the Itsekiri population is not more than one thousand people in certain areas they claim full control over.

During the recent BIVAS-aided elections, entire Itsekiri wards recorded zero votes or negligible turnouts, exposing a truth long hidden behind noise and paperwork:
The Itsekiris are a political minority clinging to a historical illusion.
They hold three local governments in their name but cannot fill the polling units in one.

Meanwhile, the Ijaws and Urhobos, who are numerically and territorially dominant, remain strangled by a manipulative political structure that gives the lion’s share of representation to the smallest group. This is not democracy. This is colonial apartheid, repackaged for the 21st century.

WE CALL ON THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, INEC AND THE WORLD

We, the true stakeholders in the Warri story, now issue this final appeal:

To the Federal Government of Nigeria:
We demand an immediate release of the final court judgment on the Warri INEC ward delineation dispute. The people cannot wait forever while injustice is allowed to fester in silence.

To INEC:
Your silence is no longer golden, it is complicity. You must stop playing politics with population. Stop enabling ethnic imbalance.
Release the judgment.

To Human Rights and International Stakeholders:
Nigeria is brewing another conflict in Warri not from guns this time but from paper bullets, stolen voices and a refusal to do what is just.
We invite the world to come, see and investigate. We are not afraid of the truth, we are only tired of its suppression.

FINAL WORD: THE PEOPLE WILL NO LONGER BE SILENT

This is no longer about Itsekiri, Ijaw or Urhobo.
It is about truth, justice and the soul of Warri.
Let those who hold power remember:
No man can own a land where his voice cannot echo louder than lies.

Warri belongs to its children, not to a throne, not to a document, not to a manufactured history.
We will no longer be silenced.

Signed:
Concerned Indigenous Stakeholders of Warri Federal Constituency