CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT AND STATE CREATION: HISTORICAL REASONS WHY OIL RIVER STATE AND TORU-IBE STATE MUST BE CREATED FOR THE IZONS/IJAWS.
SERIES: Part Two)
"Ijaw people must push the quest for an homogeneous Toru-Ibe State from Delta, Edo, and Ondo States"
"The creation of Toru-Ibe State will solve more problems than the creation of most other proposed states"~IduwiniVoice
THE BEGINNING OF THE STRUGGLE
Self-determination is an inalienable human right by which survival of the individual and thus of a people is assured. It is in the free exercise of this principle that any group of individuals could conceive and give birth to a government in an environment congenial to peace, human dignity and progress. It was this spirit of self-determination that gave birth to the history of the struggle for the creation of an homogeneous administrative unit for the Ijaws of the Niger Delta of Nigeria.
Started as far back as the 1930's, the spirit got the Ijaw people of the Niger Delta, who have been popularly called the Rivers people, set on a marathon race for the political resurgence, which was to be manifested in total unification of the Ijaws of Western and Eastern Nigeria.
PROMINENT ORGANIZATIONS IN THE STRUGGLE
The first known platform which generated sufficient public opinion on the unification crusade was the Ijaw Elite Society, formed in Lagos. The struggle thereafter was publicly carried out in several names under various organizations and leadership both within and outside the country. Some of these were the Ijaw Rivers Peoples League, Ijaw State Union, Ijaw National Union, Ijaw Students Union, Rivers State Movement, Rivers Chiefs and Peoples Conference, Rivers Study Group, Council of Niger Delta Rehabilitation, Gesi-Ijaw Union, Niger Delta Congress, Ijaw Union, Niger Delta Volunteer Service, Oil Rivers People League and many others in various Ijaw communities at home and abroad.
With the exception of the Calabar-Ogoja-Rivers State Movement which wanted a State covering Caliber, Ogoja and the Rivers Province, all these organizations were persistent and unequivocally demand that the proposed State for the Niger Delta people should compromise the contiguous territories of Western Ijaw Division, Opobo Town, Andonni and the then Port Harcourt, Degema and Yenagoa Provinces of Eastern Nigeria.
This political goal of the Ijaw people which found expression in the various unions decades ago is still burning in the hearts of all true Ijaws and Riversmen (as the agitators were then known) in the 1967 State creation exercise and opportunity to group our people under homogeneous administrative blocs. Geographical contiguity, economic viability, cultural and ethnological homogeneity are glaring factors that support the demand for the merger of Eastern and Western Ijaws into homogeneous political units. This demand which has been the most persistent and longest of all agitations for statehood in the country, deserve careful attention in the 2025 state creation exercise.
WEAPONS OF THE STRUGGLE
Through petitions, resolutions, welcome addresses, memoranda, special delegations and parliamentary debates by elected representatives of the people, both regional and central government authorities in the country were prevailed upon to recognize the unanimous beliefs and aspirations of the people inhabiting the compact expanse of the Niger Delta territory to be administered and developed under one region, province or state.
Several conferences were held both in the East and Western Regions of the country on the issue of the creation of Rivers State. These conferences were followed by special representations at the Nigerian Constitutional Conference both in London and at home, including the famous and historic Minorities Commission chaired by Sir Henry Willink.
.....To be continued
© AFOEGBA PETER GOODYEAR ESQ, PMP.
NATIONAL LEGAL ADVISER, MOVEMENT FOR THE SURVIVAL OF THE IZON ETHNIC NATIONALITY IN THE NIGER DELTA (MOSIEND)
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