Coalition Of Indigenous Ijaw Landowners And Historical Advocates Sends Open Letter To President Tinubu, National Security Adviser Ribadu Over Itsekiris False Claim Of Owning Lands Belonging To Ijaws -

By Uche Alvin

OPEN LETTER TO THE PRESIDENCY AND THE NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER

Title: IN DEFENSE OF ANCESTRAL TRUTH — THE IJAW PEOPLE SHALL NOT BE ERASED BY LIES OR INTIMIDATION

To:
His Excellency,
The President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria,
Abuja, Nigeria.

And

The National Security Adviser,
Office of the National Security Adviser,
Presidency, Abuja.

Your Excellency,

In the name of our ancestors and in defence of our unborn generations, we the Indigenous Ijaw people of Warri rise to speak not from the bitterness of ethnic grievance, but from the sacred depth of ancestral truth. Our hands are clean. Our claim is just. Our voices tremble not with fear but with the conviction that history, though long denied, can never be erased.

For decades, a fraudulent narrative has been projected and sponsored, a narrative that seeks to rewrite our identity, confiscate our lands and delegitimize our existence. At the centre of this narrative lies a falsehood championed by Itsekiri political and traditional actors who continue to portray the Ijaw people as migrants and tenants on the very land where our ancestors are buried. We reject this lie with the full weight of history and the courage of truth.

We are not settlers. We are not strangers. We are not tenants. We are the first people of these waters, the ancient custodians of the creeks, rivers and estuaries of Warri. The settlements of Ogbe-Ijoh, Gbaramatu, Diebiri, Egbema, Isaba and others did not appear by political invention. They were here long before the Olu throne was forged into centralized power by British fiat in 1952. We existed before the colonists redrew boundaries and empowered native agents like Chief Dore Numa to act as proxies of land transfer over territories that were never theirs.

It is on record and we call upon the Presidency to acknowledge that even Chief Dore Numa himself confessed in writing that the lands around Miller Waterside and Ogbe-Ijoh do not belong to the Itsekiris. This is not folklore. It is documented evidence. It is colonial correspondence. It is also the moral bedrock upon which the Itsekiris’ fake claims now crumble.

The so-called leases and land documents being paraded by Itsekiri actors are not titles of ownership. They are colonial instruments of appropriation, signed by men who had no ancestral claim to the lands they leased. These papers are not rooted in customary consent or community authorization. They are the ashes of colonial manipulation, used then to divide and exploit and used now to dominate and suppress.

Today, this deceit has found a new theatre, the political manipulation of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). We are aware of the growing pressure mounted by Itsekiri elites to suppress or distort the final delineation results for Warri Federal Constituency. This is because the truth of numbers no longer favours their illusion of dominance. The demographic facts on the ground affirm that the Ijaws, not the Itsekiris, constitute the larger population in many parts of Warri South and Warri South-West. And yet, they want INEC to hide the truth, fearing that justice will break the monopoly they’ve maintained through decades of distortion.

We call on the Presidency and the National Security Adviser to rise above political appeasement and ethnic preference. Let not the federal government become complicit in the quiet continuation of colonial injustice. Let not the Nigerian State lend its authority to a lie that history and the law have already exposed.

We recall with pain how Ijaw attempts to assert rightful ownership have been shut down in courtrooms, not because of lack of evidence but because of old rulings built on flawed assumptions, rulings that referenced colonial maps and arbitrary administrative boundaries rather than ethnographic reality. Yet, the Nigerian Constitution does not recognize colonial prejudice as the foundation of land ownership. It recognizes customary law, population realities and historical occupancy, all of which favour the Ijaw claim to the lands now wrongly claimed by the Itsekiris.

This is not a war cry. This is not an invitation to ethnic strife. This is a solemn call to truth. We want peace, but we will not purchase it with silence. We want justice, but we will not beg for it with bowed heads. We will not inherit shame from the bones of our fathers and we will not hand over falsehood to the future of our children.

The Olu of Itshekiri may sit as king among his own people, that is his right. But he shall not sit over us. He shall not rule lands he never owned. He shall not preside over territories that were never his, nor bear the title of sovereign in lands where no homage is paid to his crown.

We urge the President to instruct INEC to publish the final delineation results without further delay. We urge the NSA to monitor and neutralize all forms of ethnic incitement disguised as traditional entitlement. We urge the Nigerian State to reaffirm that no ethnic group, no matter how politically connected, shall enjoy more rights than others under a government of the people.

The survival of the Nigerian union depends not on suppressing truth but on upholding it.

We have been patient. We have followed the law. But let it be known: the Ijaw people shall no longer tolerate the distortion of our identity or the confiscation of our heritage. We will protect our ancestral lands, our political rights and our cultural dignity with every lawful means. We will do so peacefully. But we will never do so passively.

The world is watching. Our ancestors are listening. Let justice speak now.

Signed:
Miebi Thomp,
President Coalition Of Indigenous Ijaw Landowners And Historical Advocates