Foremost Rights Group Writes Nigerian Government, INEC, Says Federal Government’s Continuous Recognition Of Olu Of Itsekiri As Overlord Of Warri Must Stop -

By Uche Alvin

OPEN LETTER TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OF NIGERIA, INEC AND THE CONSCIENCE OF THE NATION

RE: THE OLU OF ITSEKIRI CANNOT CONTINUE TO BEAR A FALSE TITLE

Subthemes:
Colonial Cartography and Ethnic Favoritism: How the British Weaponized the Olu Stool
INEC and the Struggle for Electoral Justice in Warri Federal Constituency
The Olu Is Not My King: Why Ijaws Reject the Itsekiri Throne’s False Authority
Delineation Delay Is a Crime: Holding INEC Accountable for Ethnic Manipulation in Favour of a Minority Clique

There is a weight that history has carried for too long in silence, a weight layered in injustice, veiled in colonial deceit and passed from one generation to the next under the guise of “tradition.” That weight bears the name “Olu of Warri.”

But let the world now hear our voice, because the silence has become suffocating.

The Olu of Itsekiri is not the Olu of Warri. That title was not born of consensus. It was not the fruit of community. It was not an outcome of organic leadership or indigenous unity. It was a colonial gift, a distortion inked into administrative policy by British officials who preferred the ease of ruling through a client king over the reality of Warri’s multiethnic truth.

The British colonial officers, facing administrative difficulty in governing the Warri Province, found it easier to elevate one ethnic minority, the Itsekiris into a position of symbolic supremacy. The 1926 Reorganization of the Warri Division, written by A.W. Howson, cautioned against any attempt to impose the Olu’s authority over the Ijaw and Urhobo, acknowledging clearly that these peoples had their own sovereign structures, their own lands and owed no allegiance to any Itsekiri throne.

And still, in 1952, despite protest letters, petitions, and peaceful defiance, the Western Regional Government, pressured by Itsekiri elites and with full colonial complicity renamed the Olu of Itsekiri as Olu of Warri. The act was neither symbolic nor innocent. It was a political move of ethnic elevation and geographic conquest and it has cast a long shadow over the Niger Delta ever since.

That shadow continues to deepen.

In the decades that followed, the Nigerian state inherited not only the maps but the myths. Institutions that should uphold neutrality, INEC chief among them, have continued to legitimize the false hierarchy imposed by that fraudulent title. The result? Communities like Gbaramatu, Ogbe-Ijoh, Egbema, Isaba, and many others, have seen themselves erased on electoral maps. Their people are counted in censuses, but silenced at the polls. Their ancestral territories are visible on satellite imagery, yet absent from ward delineation. They are politically present, yet institutionally invisible.

This is not just erasure. It is suppression.

INEC’s refusal to publish the final delineation report for Warri South and Warri South-West amounts to active complicity in ethnic injustice. While every other part of Nigeria moves forward with updated representation, Warri remains suspended in intentional delay. Why? Because the truth of that delineation would make it impossible to preserve the lie. The demographic facts would unmask the Itsekiri minority. The numerical dominance of Ijaws and Urhobos would be exposed. And the age-old colonial scaffolding would collapse.

And so, injustice is preserved for the comfort of tradition. And tradition is preserved for the power of one group. That is not federal character. That is federal betrayal.

But the land knows the truth. And so do the courts.

The 1958 ruling in Kumagba v. Ejoh reaffirmed that land in Warri is communally owned by its native occupants, not by a centralized ethnic lordship. In Omadeli v. The Federal Ministry of Lands, attempts to use fraudulent claims to register Ijaw land as Itsekiri were struck down. And in the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Ginuwa Ruling House v. Itsekiri Communal Land Trust, it was made clear that monarchy does not confer ownership over territory.

Yet till this day, the Nigerian government treats the Olu’s office as a territorial symbol, rather than a cultural one. Federal delegations visit him as “king of Warri.” Government documents list him as a singular authority. Military units seek his consultation when entering riverine communities that have no history of Itsekiri governance.

This must stop.

Let it be stated for the record, we are not tenants on our ancestral soil.
We do not kneel to a crown we did not place.
We will not accept a kingship built on cartographic fraud and sustained by political complicity.

What we seek is not revenge. It is restoration.

We demand that INEC release the Warri delineation report without further delay.
We demand that the federal government cease its recognition of the title “Olu of Warri” and revert to the historically correct designation “Olu of Itsekiri.”
We demand the political acknowledgment of every Ijaw and Urhobo community whose voice has been stifled by maps that lie and systems that enable them.

Because if we continue down this path of institutional falsehood, it is not only the Ijaw and Urhobo that lose. It is the credibility of the Nigerian state. It is the soul of democracy.

We are a peace-loving people, but our patience is not infinite. We have tolerated distortion. We have suffered under imposed silence. But history has come full circle. We now speak.

The Olu of Itsekiri must drop the title “Olu of Warri.”
INEC must return to constitutional neutrality.
The Nigerian state must stop giving life to a colonial illusion that divides where it should unite.

Our lands are not battlegrounds for the performance of monarchy.
Our identity is not for political bargaining.
Our history is not a canvas to be repainted with someone else’s brush.

Let this be known across Nigeria and beyond:
The Ijaw and Urhobo peoples of Warri will not be erased.

Not by silence.
Not by fraud.
Not by stolen crowns.

Signed,
Biotu Friday
Chairman

Ovie Mankind
Secretary
Ijaw/Urhobo Patriotic Front for Historical and Electoral Justice
Warri Federal Constituency, Niger Delta