Delta Based Group Reveals Important Secret About Itsekiris, Says The Olu’s Throne Is Built On Rented Land -

By Esther David

PRESS RELEASE

The Olu’s Throne Is Built on Rent: The Daylight Fraud of Itsekiri Ownership Claims Must End

For far too long, we have been trapped beneath a mountain of lies, crafted, polished and recycled by a small but vocal Itsekiri elite who thrive on deception, colonial distortion and political manipulation.

Today, we rise to break that silence. To tear off the veil. To confront the lie with truth and the myth with memory.

The very foundation of the Itsekiri claim to Warri is a fraud dressed in royal robes. The so-called kingdom is built on sand and the Olu’s palace, the symbol of this imagined dominion is itself sitting on rented land. The land on which the Olu of Warri’s palace stands belongs to the Okere-Urhobo people and the Itsekiris still pay rent on it till this day. What kind of landlord pays rent? What kind of ruler governs from a throne leased from another people?

This is not just irony, it is scandalous. And it is only the beginning.

We, the Ijaws and Urhobos, are not tenants. We are not migrants. We are the indigenous children of the land and water, the ancestral owners of the territories now falsely claimed by others. When the Itsekiris arrived, they met us. We welcomed them. We gave them space to settle. But they turned our kindness into conquest and our hospitality into hostility. They chose treachery over truth.

They weaponized their relationship with colonial officers like Chief Dore Numa, a man who, even in his own letters to the British, acknowledged that lands like Ogbe-Ijoh and Miller Waterside belonged to the Ijaws. That truth is in writing. But the Itsekiris won’t tell you that. Instead, they parade these same areas as theirs, armed with fake leases, questionable signatures and documents created in rooms where the true owners were never invited.

They ignore court rulings that expose their deception. They avoid discussing judgments like Okumagba v. Ejohgbon, because they know those rulings destroy their claims. And now, as INEC prepares to publish fair ward delineations based on actual settlement and population, they tremble. They know that when the truth is allowed to breathe, their paper kingdom will fall apart.

This press release is not just a rebuttal, it is an outcry from a people whose heritage has been trampled, whose voices have been silenced and whose lands have been misnamed. The Olu of Itshekiri has no sovereignty over the Ijaw or Urhobo people. His authority ends where his community ends. We owe him no allegiance, no tribute, no recognition.

We call on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to immediately publish the final delineation results for Warri Federal Constituency. This delay is not technical, it is political. It is part of a broader attempt to protect falsehood and suppress truth. INEC must not allow itself to be a pawn in an ethnic chess game. It must fulfill its constitutional duty.

We call on the Federal Government of Nigeria, the National Security Adviser, the National Judicial Council and every democratic institution to rise above politics and defend the truth. The people of Warri are watching. The world is watching. And the conscience of this country is on trial.

We will not be silent anymore. We will not sit while our lands are renamed and our histories are erased. We will speak, we will stand and we will resist every attempt to enslave us through falsified history and colonial lies repackaged in modern costumes.

Warri is not the property of one ethnic group. It is a living mosaic of peoples and cultures, any attempt to turn it into a private empire must be resisted with everything lawful, historical and just.

Let truth rise above manipulation. Let justice break the silence.

Signed:
Miebi Thomp
President, Coalition of Ijaw Ancestral Communities and Landowners

Cc:

INEC Headquarters

The Presidency

National Assembly

Office of the NSA

National Judicial Council

Nigerian Bar Association

African Union Peace & Security Council

United Nations Human Rights Desk

National & International Media