Ladies and Gentlemen of the Press,

Members of Civil Society Organizations

Ladies and Gentlemen

Let me here formally thank you all for honoring our invitation, even at such a very short notice. Specifically, we want to express some regret that this press conference is coming at this particular moment after a "gruesome" guarded tour of Koko, and thus some of you might be tired now. It is our view that what you saw might have impacted on some of you in different ways viz. physically, emotionally, psychologically and otherwise. Some may possibly be pondering whether what we have just seen are actually real and not dream or a movie; some may be wondering if such a calamity can be visited on defenseless people with such impunity as if there is no 'modern' government in place. In the same vane, some may be cogitating if we as Nigerians are not inexorably regressing into barbarism.

Possibly too, some could be wondering if the Nigerian Nation State can be said to be of any relevance if it cannot perform the most important basic function of governments (the world over) which is the protection of lives and property. I am guessing also that some of you may be asking yourselves what would have happened such that the people of Koko watched helplessly and allowed the Ijaws to devastate them with such reckless abandon, particularly, how they ‘;allowed’ the INC and IYC militia to throw the four innocent children ( presumed to be Itsekiris by birth ) of the Pastor of Four Square Gospel Church, Koko(names withheld) into the inferno. You saw where they were buried (and may their souls rest in perfect peace-amen). Could the Itsekiris in Koko have been so hypnotized to have ‘allowed’ such gruesomeness and bestiality? or are they not aware of the natural law of right to self defense? and should have naturally protected these defenseless kids and themselves? What were the over 40 members of the Nigerian Army doing when all these were happening, more so when 20 0f them were positioned very close to where these children were living? It is not impossible also that some of us here may be expressing some fears about the future of the Itsekiris, particularly the possibility of their being wiped out from the face of the earth, or at best turned into a homeless ethnic group in Nigeria? Some of us also, may be wondering if one ethnic group (specifically of the Niger Delta Configuration) can wreck such havoc on another in the same Niger Delta when they all relentlessly vilify the Federal Government and oil companies for all their woes?

These are some of the issues among others that may be bothering some of us here; and in our view, they are all legitimate. They demand for contemplations and answers from society and mankind in general through (among others), a dialectical analysis of the present state of the Itsekiris vis- a- vis their Ijaw neighbors and the Nigeria Nation State, particularly, the Delta State arrangement (now presided over by an unfriendly Governor) who has undoubtedly become albatross of the Itsekiris.

In the present world (where information/communication now reigns supreme), those of you here and the media houses/groups you represent are no doubt strategically placed and empowered by your profession to bring to society, the International Community and mankind in general these nagging and provoking issues and questions.

Let us be quick to add here that the degree of barbarism and gruesomeness possibly deducible and imagined as informing Ijaw's actions which culminated in the present state of Koko, will pale away to a state of near nothingness if compared to what the Ijaws( in their undeclared war against the Itsekiris in particular and the Nigerian Nation State in general) recently did at Madangho, Ajudaibo, Ogidigben, Ugbogbodu, Ogheye, Jakpa , Gbokoda, Ureju, Eghoro, Bateren, Dehele etc. In these places, hundreds have so far been murdered with many beheaded by the Ijaws, umpteen abducted, and as usual with the Ijaws, they should by now have been sacrificed to their Egbesu deity.

It is a pity that we are not in the position now to arrange for you to visit these places specifically because of the risks involved, as the IYC and INC militia remain unrepentantly and pathologically violent and bestial without any capacity for remorse; and have thus made the whole area unsafe.

What you are seeing here at Koko is just a continuation of a particular pattern that the Ijaws have put in place since 1997. This many of you here are no doubt aware of. This was how it all started. Please refer to the ethnographic map of the Niger Delta as below. Specifically refer to the territory of the Itsekiri.

The Itsekiri territory (as cartographically highlighted above) constitutes the old Warri Division, now Warri North, Warri South and Warri South West Local Government Areas (LGAs). Let us briefly relate the above map to the views of Prof. Obaro Ikime in his The Merchant Prince of the Niger Delta (p1) when he noted that the Itsekiris inhabit the north-western extremity of the Niger Delta in an area bounded approximately by latitudes 5⁰ 20 and 6⁰ N and longitudes 5⁰ 5 and5⁰ 40 East. Their neighbors are Bini to the north, the Ijo to the South; the Urhobo to the East and the Yoruba of Ondo Province to the northwest....Itsekiriland is watered by three large rivers, the Benin, the Escravos and the Forcados. He further said (in p. 69) that the Counsel-General visited Warri on 18 August,1891.He also reported that the Chiefs of Warri were Itsekiri under Nana.

Also, according to Richard Gray, Professor of History, University of London in the Cambridge of Africa vol.4 at page 228; he said; By the 18^th century, Warri was considered as an Independent Itsekiri Political State comprising also a few Urhobo and Ijo

Within the Itsekiri homeland as indicated in the above map, are three Ijaw enclaves viz Ogbe-Ijaw, Gbaramatu and Egbeoma. All the lands that constitute these enclaves had at one time or the other been subject of court litigations, and all judgments were in favor of the Itsekiris as legitimate owners of the lands; and the Ijaws were declared as settlers/customary tenants.

In 1991, upon request from the Itsekiris, the old Warri Division was divided into two, viz Warri South and Warri North LGAs. Upon further request from the Itsekiris through the Justice Mbanefo Committee, the Abacha regime further divided Warri North LGA into two (as encapsulated in Decrees No. 36 of 1996 and No.7 of 1997)viz: Warri South and Warri South West. The latter which is actually the newly created one had its headquarters at Ogidigben, an Itsekiri town. But when the then Military Administrator of Delta State Col. John Dungs was announcing the creation, he mischievously announced a Warri Central LGA with headquaters at Warri GRA and Warri South LGA with headquaters at Ogbe Ijo (an Ijo enclave). The then Federal Military Government promptly issued Decree No. 7 of 1997 to correct the wrong and misleading announcement of Colonel John Dungs in which there is no Warri Central LGA but Warri North with headquarters at Koko, Warri South with headquarters at Warri and Warri South West with headquarters at Ogidigben.

From the period of the relocation in1997 to July 1999, the Ijaws invaded Itsekiri Homeland. Find below names of some Itsekiri towns they destroyed –(1) Uba-Erure (2) Ukpomi (3) Mosayaghan (4) Warri Metropolis (5) Takula (6) Ijahala (7) Ugbogbodu (8) Madangho (9) Kpokpo (10) Ajainomi (11) Kantu (12) Bresibi (13) Obonteghareda (14) Koko (15) Ureju (16) Ebrohimi (17) Omadino (18) Gbokoda (19) Deghele (20) Kpisan (21) Ajaokuololo (22) Ajadediare (23) Aja Iyemiduokori (24) Kokovo (25) Urejusinsin (26) Eghoro (27) Ugborodo and a few others.

As indicated above, Koko was among the towns invaded and about thirty buildings razed. Then, the General Hospital, Koko was sacked and a patient killed. Recall that we showed you at Koko the grave of one of those killed and beheaded. This time around, they spared the General Hospital, but attacked the Water Works. This you have also seen.

SSee the photographs below.

These were Itsekiri young men who were working with an oil servicing company. They, among other staff of the company who were returning home for the New Year holidays on the 27th of December 1997. The boat in which they were voyaging was accosted by an armada of speedboats carrying armed Ijaw militia. They forced the boat conveying the workers to stop, got the military officers escorting the boat thoroughly beaten, and then began a process of separation of the Itsekiris from the rest. At the end of the exercise they 'sieved' 6 Itsekiri men from the rest and took them away. Since then, none of the six has been found.

See the picture below

These were the remains of Anuwe Akpofi a 70 year Itsekiri man after being killed and beheaded by the Ijaws in 1998. Within the same period, 21 Itsekiris made up of women and children who were picking periwinkle near Abeugborodo in Warri North LGA were abducted by the Ijaws. Up till today, no body can give account of their where about. The lists of such chilling atrocities are endless.

While these atrocities were going on, the pattern of reporting by both the local and international media smacks of total ignorance of the issues a stake, and reports were packaged and designed to smokescreen the barbarism and crudity of the Ijaws against the Itsekiris, and also present them as victims of Itsekiris’ and state orchestrated oppression.

While the Itsekiris were being threatened with apparent extermination and forceful seizure of their home land by the Ijaws, the world was being made to see Ijaw barbarism largely as crises in the Niger Delta occasioned by years of neglect. The inescapable question is whether the Itsekiris have ever been immuned from these years of neglect. If the Itsekiris are not immune, why should they be made to suffer for such official actions they are not party to; but are victims of; in an unimaginable dimension such that will pale whatever others including the Ijaws think they are suffering.

Also, within this period, certain individuals rationalized Ijaws' atrocities against the Itsekiris on the ground that they were denied the opportunity of having the headquarters of the then newly created Warri South-West LGA .

The present phase of Ijaw atrocities against the Itsekiris is indicative of the fact that the relocation issue was just a smokescreen, and beneath it lie a different motive for the 1997-1999 barbarism against the Itsekiris. This is more so, when against the various provisions of the 1999 Constitution, Governor James Ibori directed that the headquarter of the said LGA should be relocated to Ogbe Ijo, thereby super imposing state law on federal law when, in violation of the provisions of the 1999 Constitution. The relocation as effected by Governor Ibori failed to pacify the Ijaws, which clearly indicate that the 1997-1999 devastation of Itsekiri land had nothing to do with the issue of the location or relocation of the Warri South-West LGA headquarters. We shall later highlight the real motive behind Ijaws' unending aggression against their neighbors, particularly the Itsekiris.

Ladies and gentlemen of the press, as we had earlier said, the scene of genocide now in place in many towns in Itsekiri homeland significantly pale what you have just seen here at Koko. What could then be said to have triggered this present phase of devastating Itsekiri homeland and turning same into human abattoir by the INC and IYC militias.

From their Babel of reasons which include the usual chant of State and Oil Companies induced underdevelopment, it seems that the issue of ward delineation stands accentuated among their smoke screening grievances. As you all know, there are statutorily specified procedures and time for ward delineation. This the Ijaws cannot claim ignorance of; and this is in addition to their status in Itsekiri homeland as customary tenants.

Ladies and gentlemen of the press, we now refer you to the statements below from the Ijaw leadership. The Ijaw Ethnic Nationality Rights and Protection Organization of Nigeria once said that;

We make bold therefore to assert here once again for the attention of all Nigerians in general and the Federal Government in particular that the TERRITORY owned and occupied by the IJAW ETHNIC NATIONALITY in Nigeria stands historically demarcated in the Niger Delta region from the colonial boundaries of the Eastern ANDONI-IJAWS in the present AKWA IBOM STATE through RIVERS STATE, DELTA STATE, and EDO STATE to the boundary between the territories and homelands of the AROGBO/APOI-IJAWS in the present ONDO STATE and the Epe LGA of LAGOS STATE in the true SOUTH of the Federal Republic of Nigeria bounded by the Atlantic Ocean. ( see THE GUARDIAN, June 5, 1994, pp.A14-A20) The group further claimed in the same publication that the lands presently occupied by the Binis in Edo State, Ilajes in Ondo State and Itsekiris in Delta State are all Ijaw lands

The Ijaw National Congress (INC) in one of their advertorials once said that:

We wish to reiterate also our inalienable rights to all lands and territories from ArogboApoi in Ondo State to Eastern Andoni territory in Akwa Ibom State and all the resources therein...and the right to exploit all the resources for the benefit of all Ijaws including generation yet unborn ( see THE GUARDIAN, Wednesday, June 17, 1998)

Along the same territorial acquisitive trajectory, part of the Kiama Declaration (a document put together by some Ijaw youths in Dec. 11, 1998, at Kiama in Bayelsa State) reads;

...the division of the Southern Protectorate into East and West in 1939 by the British marked the beginning of the balkanization of a hitherto territorial contiguous ...Ijaw people into political and administrative units...This trend is continuing in the balkanization of the Ijaws into six states- Ondo, Edo Delta, Bayelsa, Rivers and Akwa Ibom....(emphasis ours)

One cannot but ask at this juncture; how were the Ijaws balkanized by the British?, specifically when there was no record of any forceful mass removal of any ethnic group from their homelands and same resettled in another place, at least in this part of the then colonial state .

More importantly is the dubious claim of a hitherto territorial contiguous...Ijaw people. Ladies and gentlemen of the press, permit us to once again refer you to the map of The Main Ethnic Nationalities of the Niger Delta. Lets look at the Itsekiri homeland bounded by the Ilajes (Yoruba), Bini, Urhobo and Ijo. Within the Ilaje and Bini respective homelands, there are Ijaw enclaves where they occupy the status of customary tenants to the Ilajes and Binis respectively. The Ijaw enclaves in both areas are located along the boundaries between the Itsekiris, and their Bini and Ilaje neighbors.

Thus, for the Ijaw enclaves in both the Bini and Ilaje homelands to become contiguous with their kits and kin’s in the Burutu, Patani and Focardos LGAs, and Bayelsa and Rivers States will naturally require a total elimination of the Itsekiris from their homeland and same occupied by the Ijaws.

Also, another Ijaw Group, Movement for the Survival of Izon in the Niger Delta (MOSIEND) in a letter—USA/03/SEC/VOL.1/95 of 23^rd January 1995 to President Bill Clinton of the United states of America, declared their decision to create and operate a contiguous country out of present Nigeria which we would like to be named as REPUBLIC OF NIGER DELTA, embracing all the Ijaws from Apoi/Arogbo in Ondo State to Opobo/Andoni on the Eastern banks of Qua-Ibom River in Akwa Ibom State

In the same vane, MOSIEND in an earlier letter MOSIEND/S/003/VOL.1.1/ 01 of 14 July 1994, demanded specifically of the British Government through her Majesty Queen Elizabeth 11 the abrogation of Treaties of Friendship, trade and protection signed between the IJAWS and the British Government on the 25^th of January,1836 at Bonny to free them to proceed to create their Republic of Niger Delta .

As a follow up to their mad dream of putting in place a possible contiguous 'Ijaw Republic' the duo of the INC and IYC came up with the 'map' below which they made available to a section of the International Communities and some international crude oil hawkers as a strategy to convince them that the Ijaw ethnic group is synonymous with the oil rich Niger Delta.

July 2003