“INEC’s Delay In Implementing Delineation Report Is A Crime Against Truth And Justice”__

By Esther David

OPEN LETTER TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OF NIGERIA, INEC AND ALL STAKEHOLDERS IN THE NIGERIAN FEDERATION
RE: DELINEATION DELAY IS A CRIME – EXPOSING INEC’S ETHNIC BIAS AND THE ITSEKIRI MANIPULATION OF WARRI LAND HISTORY

Title Variants:
“Our Ancestral Land Is Not for Sale”
“Tyranny of the Minority: How the Itsekiri Elite Use Influence to Marginalize Indigenous Communities”
“A Call for Federal Neutrality: Why the Nigerian Government Must Stop Enabling Itsekiri Land Lies”

We write in pain. We write with historical truth in our hands and fire in our bones. We write not as beggars in a country we helped build but as sons and daughters of the Ijaw and Urhobo nations whose ancestral footprints across the creeks and riverbanks of Warri predate colonial contact. The land beneath our feet has memories, memories of our ancestors fishing, farming, trading and worshiping in the same places now politically erased by bureaucratic injustice and ethnic manipulation.

For decades, the Ijaw and Urhobo peoples of Warri South and Warri South-West have watched with growing disbelief as the Nigerian state, particularly through the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), wields the power of delineation to suffocate our political identity. INEC’s refusal to publish the completed delineation report for Warri is not just administrative inertia, it is a calculated act of suppression, a betrayal of democracy and an open endorsement of ethnic domination.

The manipulation of ward boundaries in Warri is not a new crime. It is a colonial wound reopened and deepened by modern institutions. Historical documents, court rulings and even colonial maps tell the truth that today’s power holders want buried.

The British Intelligence Report on the Ijaw Tribe compiled in the 1930s under the authority of the British Colonial Office clearly identifies Gbaramatu, Ogbe-Ijoh, Egbema and Isaba as autonomous Ijaw territories. These were not Itsekiri enclaves. These were not Itsekiri-founded towns. They were Ijaw heartlands before, during and after colonial rule. This report, along with the Annual Colonial District Reports of Warri Province (1927–1944), documents that the Itsekiris were mainly located in their ancestral areas of Ode-Itsekiri, Ugborodo and adjacent spaces, not in the deeper creeks of Warri where Ijaw and Urhobo communities have flourished for centuries.

Yet, by colonial favoritism, the Itsekiri elite were gifted disproportionate political advantage. The renaming of the Itsekiri monarchy from Olu of Itsekiri to Olu of Warri in 1952 was neither democratic nor representative, it was an imposition resisted even then by the Ijaw and Urhobo leadership. Governor Macpherson’s administration was warned by multiple memoranda that such a change would create ethnic tension, as Warri was and remains multi-ethnic. The title change, devoid of territorial legitimacy, laid the foundation for the current Itsekiri expansionist narrative, a narrative based not on land ownership but on appropriated symbolism and government-enabled fraud.

Legal history also refuses to lie. In Kumagba v. Ejog………(1958), the court ruled that land in Warri is communally owned by the indigenous peoples who inhabit it, not by some superimposed feudal overlord. The court, in unequivocal terms, held that the Itsekiri cannot claim ownership of lands they did not originally settle or control. This principle was echoed in Eyinagbolor v. IGP, where the courts rejected Itsekiri overreach and affirmed the land rights of non-Itsekiri peoples. The case of Omadeli v. Federal Ministry of Lands also casts a shadow over the Itsekiri land narrative, revealing the layers of administrative fraud and misrepresentation used to register community lands as Itsekiri-controlled. These cases are on public documented and binding form a legal bedrock against Itsekiri falsehood.

In the face of such judicial clarity, INEC’s silence becomes even more deafening. Why has INEC withheld the final delineation report for Warri South and Warri South-West, despite completing such exercises in every other part of the country? Why has the commission refused to acknowledge the numerical and geographical reality that the Ijaw and Urhobo are the majority in these local government areas? Why has INEC allowed itself to become the tool official ethnic landlords who claim political rents on land they never owned?

This is not just about votes. It is about identity. It is about existence. It is about our children growing up in places where their ancestors lived but being told they have no wards, no representation and no recognition. It is about a deliberate strategy of historical erasure, enforced by cartographic deception and elite capture.

Let it be made clear, the Ijaw and Urhobo peoples are not tenants of the Itsekiris. The oral and written history of Warri bears this out. Ode, the Ijaw ancestor, was the one who gave the Itsekiris a dancing ground when they migrated inland. This is not folklore, it is a fact preserved in early 20th-century anthropological records from the University of Ibadan and the archives of the Royal Niger Company. Ode Seikiri literally means “Ode gave the Itsekiri” a place to settle. The irony is bitter today, the guests have become landlords and the true owners are being politically castrated.

We cannot remain silent while injustice thrives. Our silence will be seen as consent. Our delay will be seen as defeat. We rise now to demand:

That INEC, without further delay, releases the full delineation report for Warri South and Warri South-West and Warri North, acknowledging the political and demographic facts on ground.

That the Federal Government takes immediate steps to end the institutional recognition of the title “Olu of Warri,” and revert it to its original, accurate form: “Olu of Itsekiri” to preserve truth and national peace.

That all leases, documents and land transfers obtained under colonial duress or post-independence manipulation be revisited, audited and subjected to truth and reconciliation processes.

That the voices of the Ijaw and Urhobo peoples, long suppressed be given space to breathe freely, speak boldly and decide their political future on the foundation of justice.

This is not just a plea, it is a warning. No people can be perpetually marginalized without consequences. If the Nigerian state refuses to listen, then history will. And when history judges, it will remember those who stood with truth and those who enabled lies.

We are not asking for favor. We are demanding recognition. We are not asking for war. We are defending our dignity. And we are not asking for what is not ours, we are reclaiming what was stolen.

Let the world hear us.
Let INEC hear us.
Let the Nigerian Government hear us.
Let the Itsekiri elite, who use power to suppress the truth, know that the days of silent submission are over.
Our ancestral land is not for sale.

Signed
Chief, Abadi Joseph
Chairman

Chief, Oghenetega faithful
Secretary

Ijaw and Urhobo Patriotic Stakeholders for Justice in Warri
Warri, Nigeria