Press Release
GLOBAL AWAKENING OF THE IJAW STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE AND SOVEREIGNTY,
Being Text of International Press Conference, held at Houston TX, United States of America, on t Global Awakening of the Ijaw Struggle for Justice and Sovereignty, the 6th July, 2025 by Prof. Benjamin O. Okaba, President, Ijaw National Congress (INC) Worldwide. Gentlemen of the Press,
We, the people of Ijaw ethnic nationality of the oil and gas rich Niger Delta region, wish to reaffirm our commitment to justice, dignity, and self-determination. The Ijaw National Congress, INC, the umbrella social cultural organization of the Ijaw race worldwide, stands resolute in our mission to advocate for and restore the rights of the Ijaw people as enshrined in international laws, ancestral treaties, and natural justice. We are resolved in championing the quest for autonomy and dignity for the Ijaw people through peaceful, strategic, and diplomatic means, and seek the solidarity of our allies worldwide.
We envision a future where traditional governance harmonizes seamlessly with modern statecraft, while ensuring that the resources, dignity, and voice of the Ijaw people are no longer subjugated to exploitative forces. This vision is not merely aspirational. It is our collective destiny, guided by the wisdom of our ancestors and fueled by the prevailing circumstances and dehumanizing experiences of our people, and galvanized by global solidarity.
Gentlemen of the press, we assemble at this historic press conference not merely to recount our wounds, but to illuminate a truth long buried beneath the sediment of silence. The Ijaw nation, ancient and dignified, stands today at a decisive threshold of being completely erased or emancipated. Our right to self-determination is not a matter of sentiment or protest. It is anchored in solemn treaties with the British Crown, validated by the sacred norms of international laws, and preserved in the living memory of a people who have refused to forget who they are. We do not come here to seek pity. We come bearing documented truth, historical legitimacy, and a solemn moral summons to justice. In addition, we affirm today that the Ijaw nation’s sovereignty, one of the four largest ethnic nationalities in Nigeria is neither a relic nor a wish, it is a right rooted in law, in history, and in justice. The Nigerian state has woven an intricate web of laws and decrees designed to disinherit and displace us. The Nigerian state feeds fat on the marrow of our natural resources, while leaving our people in hunger and disease. Yet, through it all, we have not lost our voice. Today, we raise that voice before the international community to say: ‘enough is enough’. We call for justice rooted in truth, for peace grounded in equity, and for a future shaped by our own will. We invite the international community to stand with us, not as observers of our pain, but as partners in the restoration of our dignity, our environment, and our right to self-determine and sovereignty.
Our quest for self-determination is rooted in rigorous, multidisciplinary scholarship evidenced in compact and diplomatic exchanges between the Ijaw nation and the British Crown. These documents demonstrate that before 1914, prior to British amalgamation of Nigeria, Ijaw communities entered into mutual agreement with the Crown, affirming local governance, resource rights, and autonomy (we shall publish these archives widely and submit them to the United Nations and international legal bodies to underscore their enduring validity under international law).
From Nigeria’s independence in 1960 to the present day, there has been a calculated and sustained legal trajectory, whereby successive regimes have constructed a juridical architecture designed to transfer control of oil and gas from Ijaw territory into centralized federal custody. From the 1969 Petroleum Decree to the 2021 Petroleum Industry Act (PIA), these instruments, engineered largely by oppressive hegemonic regimes and later embedded in a post-military constitution, have institutionalized the expropriation of the natural resources in Ijaw land, waterways, and mineral wealth. What masquerades as national interest is, in truth, a profound betrayal: a systematic disenfranchisement of a people whose ancestral domain once engaged the British Crown in treaty-based diplomacy. These laws do not merely dispossess the Ijaws of economic value; they severe their sovereignty, dignity, and cultural inheritance. They represent a seamless evolution of colonial extractive logic into postcolonial statecraft, internal colonialism veiled in the robes of legality and legislative order.
The legal instruments in question do not merely marginalize; they orchestrate a calibrated economic asphyxiation of the Ijaw nation. By stripping regional control of hydrocarbon wealth, suppressing derivation entitlements, and shielding corporate polluters through federal impunity, the Nigerian state has institutionalized a regime of repressive governance where Ijaw communities remain the locus of production but wallow in the periphery of benefit. Gas flaring, oil spills, and aquatic toxification persist not as unintended consequences but as inevitable by-products of a profit-centric legal order. This constitutes a form of structural violence, slow, invisible, yet devastating, where the Ijaw people are not only impoverished but imperiled in their own environment.Perhaps most pernicious is the constitutional petrification of these decrees under Section 315(5) of the 1999 Nigerian Constitution (as amended), which renders their repeal virtually impossible through ordinary democratic processes. This legal ossification transforms historical injustice into an irreversible jurisprudential orthodoxy, foreclosing the avenues of redress within Nigeria’s own legal system. It is a tragic irony: a democratic constitution has become the chief custodian of autocratic plunder. In this light, the Ijaw case transcends domestic grievance, it demands international intervention, for where national law calcifies oppression, transnational justice must respond.The fiscal trajectory of Nigeria’s derivation formula unveils a paradigm of institutionalized expropriation, whereby the Ijaw Nation, custodians of the oil wealth that undergirds the Nigerian state, has been condemned to economic peripheralization. Before 1960, non-oil (groundnut, cocoa, palm oil) producing regions were rightfully allocated 50 percent derivation share, an arrangement anchored in the spirit of equity and genuine federalism. Yet, as successive regimes entrenched central control, that share was ruthlessly eroded to a paltry 1.5 percent by 1984. Though the post-military era saw a token restoration to 13 percent, the Ijaw people remain trapped in a fiscal straitjacket. Bureaucratic sabotage and selective disbursement have converted constitutional entitlements into tools of political patronage, disbursed not as rightful claims but as discretionary favours. The result is a cruel paradox: oil-bearing communities, rich in resources, languish in penury. The image is haunting, a vineyard owner exiled from his own estate, watching others dine lavishly on his harvest, while he and his children beg for crumbs beyond the gate.This betrayal deepens when one examines the misallocation of funds meant to redress these very inequities. Between 1992 and 1995, commissions linked to Ijaw development, legally entitled to ₦72 billion, received barely ₦11 billion. In stark contrast, an astounding ₦346 billion in so-called “special funds” was diverted to non-oil-producing states. This is not mere mismanagement; it is fiscal parasitism masquerading as federalism. Even more egregiously, from 1960 to 1999, an estimated $300–$400 billion in oil revenue was siphoned into private coffers, implicating successive political elites in a kleptocratic machinery that bled the Ijaw heartlands dry. The environmental devastation consuming the Ijaw homeland is not a tragic byproduct of industrial progress, nor is it a failure of oversight, it is a deliberate, prolonged assault, meticulously veiled in the rhetoric of national interest. From 1976 to 1991 alone, more than 2,976 oil spills hemorrhaged nearly two million barrels of crude into Ijaw rivers, wetlands, and sacred soils. By 2001, this figure ballooned to 6,817 incidents, unleashing an additional three million barrels, most of which remain unrecovered, saturating the land with toxic permanence. And the crisis has not waned, with 535 new spill incidents reported in 2023, the state’s abdication of environmental responsibility becomes irrefutable. Although gas flaring was officially outlawed in 1984, more than one hundred active flaring points continue to burn defiantly across Ijaw territories, releasing invisible poisons into the atmosphere. It is on record that nearly 70 million cubic meters of gas is flared daily, an alarming figure that accounts for 41 percent of Africa’s total. These flames, though silent, speak volumes. They smother entire towns in noxious fumes, choke the once-breathing mangrove forests, and extinguish life from sacred wetlands that for centuries nourished generations.The skies above the Ijaw nation are now saturated with carcinogens and acid rain, steadily corroding both nature and human vitality. The consequences are harrowing. In areas near spill sites, neonatal mortality has doubled, and children face developmental harm before they can even speak. This is eco-imperialism, a cold, predatory order that weaponizes misery, suffocates the environment, and ruins the people’s means of livelihood. These are not random misfortunes of nature; they are the brutal consequences of a system that has traded human dignity for crude oil. If the prosperity of nations is built upon the ruins of silenced and suffering peoples, then justice must rise with urgency and not apathy. The international community must no longer look away. Yet, this devastation is not abstract. It is visceral, generational, and ruinous, etched into the daily rhythm of a people whose traditional food systems have collapsed.
We have proclaimed it in solemn assemblies, across diverse platforms, and to all who are willing to listen. I declare again with indomitable conviction that we do not come to beg for sympathy, we come to awaken global responsibility. We stand not as victims, but as people determined to reclaim their destiny that was unjustly delayed. For too long, the Ijaw people who are one of the major custodians of Nigeria’s oil and gas wealth have been victims of national injustice. Let it now be understood with absolute clarity that we are not merely dwellers on resource-rich soil. We are an ancient nation, deliberately dispossessed through manipulative decrees, deprived through coercive force, and continuously degraded through institutionalized greed. This is not the chaos of failed leadership. It is a calculated strategy of legalized oppression, designed to silence our people and erase our heritage. The Ijaw call for justice is rooted not in emotion but in international law. We invoke the universal principles enshrined in the United Nations Charter, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. These are not decorative texts for ceremonial reference, they are the moral scaffolding of the global order, forged after humanity’s darkest hours to prevent the continued subjugation of the marginalized. To ignore their application to the Ijaw question, is to render them hollow, and to betray their very spirit.We therefore assert, unequivocally, the Ijaw people’s right to self-determination, to decide our political future, own and manage our resources, preserve our ecosystem, and protect our cultural life without interference. Without prejudice to the above, we call upon the United Nations to immediately establish an independent international commission of inquiry into the decades-long pattern of environmental destruction, economic disenfranchisement, and treaty violations inflicted upon Ijaw Nation.
We further urge the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to spearhead a transparent and science-driven remediation process, underwritten by a Niger Delta Restoration Fund financed by oil multinationals that connived with the oppressive hegemonic Nigerian regimes to expropriate our oil and gas wealth, profited from our suffering.We welcome the international media to walk our creeks, witness our wounds, and document our exploitation, deprivations and neglect. Our prevailing realities and circumstances is a challenge to the conscience of the world. Global silence is no longer neutrality, but implies complicity. The season of reckoning has dawned, heralding an unyielding call for justice, restoration, and the rightful self-determination of the Ijaw people. Let history remember not only that we cried out, but that the world finally listened.
Let it be etched in the hearts of nations and echoed across oceans: the Ijaw Nation will not vanish into the footnotes of forgotten histories. We rise not in bitterness, but in boldness, armed not with arms but with ancestral truth, sacred treaties, and the enduring torch of global solidarity. We rise to reclaim what was never surrendered: our voice, our land, our future. We are not begging at the gates of the global order, we are standing at its altar, invoking the highest ideals of humanity. What was stolen was not merely our resources, it was the deferral of hope, the extinguishing of opportunities, the erosion of human dignity, and the systematic dismantling of an intergenerational promise once rooted in the dream of a dignified future.As we stand united at home and in the diaspora, let the bravery of our ancestors ignite a new dawn for the Ijaw people, and by extension, for all oppressed nations yearning for light. May justice flow through our creeks like a mighty tide. May truth rise like the mangrove after flood and fire. And may our cry today be the seed of tomorrow’s emancipation.
Signed:
Professor Benjamin O. Okaba,
President, Ijaw National Congress, For and On Behalf of Congress (INC) Global
Press Release
World Press Conference by the Ijaw Publishers Forum on the Activities of the Presidential Amnesty Programme under Dr. Dennis Burutu Otuaro.
Gentlemen of the Press,
The Ijaw Publishers Forum (IPF) is a collective of professional media practitioners dedicated to upholding truth, balance, and fairness in our reporting.
We are not a tool in anyone’s hands — our allegiance is to the truth, the people, and the progress of the Niger Delta. As journalists of conscience, we commend and defend good leadership wherever it is found, especially among Ijaw sons and daughters who have distinguished themselves in service.
Our mission is simple: to speak without fear or favour, to highlight performance where it exists, and to challenge wrongdoing when it appears.
Therefore, when we lend our voice in support of any public office holder, it is not out of sentiment, politics, or personal gain, but out of an objective recognition of results, integrity, and purposeful leadership.
In this spirit, we gather today for this World Press Conference to present the true picture of the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP) under the capable leadership of Dr. Dennis Burutu Otuaro — a man whose administration has revived confidence, restored focus, and repositioned the programme for the genuine empowerment of Niger Deltans.
Having said that, we, the conglomerate of Ijaw media organisations, hereby express our strong support for the leadership of High Chief Dr. Dennis Burutu Otuaro (Ph.D.) as Administrator of the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP).
His tenure, since his appointment by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on 14 March 2024, has already demonstrated clarity of purpose, measurable achievements, and dedication to service.
Key Achievements & Commitments
Academic and Leadership Credentials:
Dr. Otuaro entered office with strong academic credentials. He holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Politics and Development Studies, an M.Sc. in Public Administration, and a B.Sc. in Education.
Beyond Stipends — Real Empowerment: Under his leadership, PAP has moved beyond mere stipend payments to ex-agitators and launched broader human capital development interventions.
Human-Focused Leadership:
The Administrator emphasised “giving the programme a human face… developed for the people of the Niger Delta for a better future.”
Expanded Scholarship Scheme:
PAP has deployed over 140 scholars overseas (notably to the UK and South Africa) as part of its expanded scholarship programme.
Inclusive Stakeholder Participation: He has consistently called for stakeholder inclusion, including women’s participation in the peace process for the Niger Delta.
Commitment to Peace and Development: He has reaffirmed the programme’s mandate of promoting sustainable peace, security, and development in the Niger Delta region.
Strategic Repositioning of PAP:
These are not symbolic gestures alone — they reflect a strategic repositioning of PAP to deliver tangible value, particularly through education, vocational training, and stakeholder engagement for communities long impacted by militancy, environmental degradation, and underdevelopment.
Our Position
We maintain that Dr. Otuaro’s stewardship has placed the Presidential Amnesty Programme on firmer footing in terms of transparency, accountability, and performance.
It is in the interest of the Niger Delta people and Nigeria as a whole that the programme should not be derailed by those who prefer the status quo or view reform as a threat to entrenched interests.
Genuine criticism and oversight are welcome — but what we are witnessing in certain quarters are attempts to undermine a capable, reform-minded leader through misdirection, misinformation, and vested-interest campaigns.
For example, credible reports indicate that attacks on the Administrator have increased simply because he “refused to open the coffers of the Amnesty Programme to certain groups of individuals.”
Call to Action.
We therefore call upon:
PAP delegates, beneficiaries, and Niger Delta community stakeholders to continue supporting Dr. Otuaro and his reform agenda. Unity behind reform-minded leadership is indispensable.
Media houses, civil society organisations, and youth groups to offer constructive feedback rather than destructive opposition. Let debates be about ideas and outcomes, not personalities.
Critics of Dr. Otuaro’s leadership to substantiate their allegations transparently and through proper channels, rather than behind the cover of gossip, clandestine campaigns, or destabilising tactics.
All arms of government — federal, state, and local — to give PAP the institutional backing it needs to fulfil its mandate. The region deserves no less.
Conclusion
We assert that the future of the Niger Delta and the wellbeing of its people will not be served by retreating into old patterns. For the Presidential Amnesty Programme to deliver on its promise of reintegration, empowerment, and development, it must be allowed to evolve under capable stewardship.
Dr. Dennis Burutu Otuaro has demonstrated the aptitude, commitment, and vision required for this task. We pledge our continued support for his success — and we urge others to abandon partisan posturing and join in the collective work of transforming the Niger Delta for the better.
God bless Ijaw Publishers Forum
God bless Niger Delta
God bless
Signed,
Comrade Ozobo Austin
- President, Ijaw Publishere Forum
- November 6, 2025
Press Release
FULL TEXT OF PRESS STATEMENT BY THE IJAW NATIONAL CONGRESS (INC) ON THE RECENT PRESIDENTIAL PARDONS
PRESS STATEMENT BY THE IJAW NATIONAL CONGRESS (INC) ON THE RECENT PRESIDENTIAL PARDONS: A SYMBOLIC GESTURE IGNORING FUNDAMENTAL INJUSTICES
October 13, 2025 | Yenagoa, Bayelsa State
The Ijaw National Congress (INC), the apex socio-cultural organization of the Ijaw nation worldwide, has observed the recent exercise of the prerogative of mercy by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, which granted pardons to 175 Nigerians.
While we respectfully acknowledge the constitutional right of the President to wield this power, and recognize the symbolic value in correcting certain historical wrongs, the INC views this action with profound skepticism. We are not oblivious of the serious moral issues and questions raised by other critical stakeholders within and outside the country, but feel more bothered by the fact that this gesture, though wide-ranging, does little to address the deep-seated, systemic, and ongoing injustices perpetrated against the Ijaw people and the wider Niger Delta region.
Our position is informed by the following critical considerations:
1. The Pardon of the Ogoni Nine: A Welcome but Incomplete Act. The posthumous pardon granted to Ken Saro-Wiwa and the eight other Ogoni leaders is a long-overdue acknowledgement of the grave judicial murder committed by the Nigerian state in 1995. However, this symbolic act remains tragically disconnected from the living realities in Ogoniland and the entire Niger Delta. The environmental devastation, economic marginalization, and political repression that Ken Saro-Wiwa died fighting against continue unabated today. Pardoning the dead without healing the land and empowering the living is a hollow victory.
2. A Distraction from Core Issues of Resource Justice: The Ijaw nation remains the primary source of the oil and gas wealth that sustains Nigeria. Yet, we remain in the perpetual periphery of benefit, suffering from what can only be described as “economic asphyxiation”. The legal architecture of dispossession, from the Petroleum Decree of 1969 to the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) of 2021, remains firmly in place, systematically expropriating our resources and severing our sovereignty. A presidential pardon that does not restore our dignity and right to control and manage our God-given resources is no use to us.
3. The Unaddressed Ecological Genocide. While the President offers pardons, the Ijaw homeland continues to endure an ecological collapse orchestrated by decades of oil exploration. With thousands of recorded oil spills and continuous gas flaring that poisons our air and water, our ecosystem—the bedrock of our livelihood and cultural heritage—is being systematically destroyed. We do not need paternalistic gestures of mercy; we demand environmental justice, ecological restoration, and accountability from multinational corporations and the Nigerian state.
Our Demands:
The Ijaw National Congress, therefore, reiterates that our struggle is not for symbolic pardons but for substantive justice. We call on the Federal Government of Nigeria and the international community to:
– Initiate a genuine process of resource control and fiscal federalism that allows the Ijaw people to own and manage their resources as a right enshrined in natural justice and international law.
– Enforce a comprehensive and urgent environmental remediation program in the Niger Delta, in line with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Report on Ogoniland and beyond.
– Repeal obnoxious laws like the Land Use Act and review constitutional provisions that perpetuate internal colonialism and “legalized oppression”.
– Address the disparity between the governance of the oil and gas sector, as contained in PIA 2021 and the solid minerals governance by the Nigerian Minerals and Mining Act, 2007. This discrimination is designed to militarise, plunder and marginalise the Niger Delta, while affording a more equitable regime for solid mineral resources.
– Address the historical and political grievances of the Ijaw people, including the brazen political assaults on Ijaw sons and daughters, as witnessed in the recent illegal impeachment attempts against Governor Siminalayi Fubara of Rivers State.
Conclusion:
The Ijaw nation can no longer be placated by tokenistic gestures. Our right to self-determination is inalienable and rooted in solemn treaties with the British Crown and validated by international law. We shall continue to pursue this cause through peaceful, diplomatic, and strategic means, with the full solidarity of the global community.
The INC remains resolute in its mission to champion the dignity, justice, and sovereignty of the Ijaw people. We will not relent until our people are free from the shackles of oppression and can truly determine their own political and economic destiny.
Long Live the Ijaw Nation!
Prof. Benjamin O. OkabaPresident,
Ijaw National Congress (INC) Global
Press Release
PRESS RELEASE: The PIA and Solid Minerals Act – The Legislative Disparity and Discrimination Against the Niger Delta People
Being a Press Briefing by Prof Benjamin Okaba President, Ijaw National Congress (INC) Global on September 6, 2025, at the International Wing of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos, Nigeria, on Arrival from A 4-Day Working Visit to the Republic of Ghana.
The Ijaw National Congress (INC), the apex socio-cultural body of the Ijaw Nation, under my leadership as President, is compelled to address the Nigerian public and the international community on the grave and systematic injustices codified into law against the people of the Niger Delta. Our focus is the stark and discriminatory disparity between the governance of the oil and gas sector, as contained in the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) 2021, and the solid minerals sector, governed by the Nigerian Minerals and Mining Act 2007.
A comparative analysis reveals not a simple difference in administrative approach, but a deliberate and calculated legislative framework designed to militarize, plunder, and marginalize the Niger Delta while affording other regions a gentler, more equitable regime for their resources. This is a classic case of two Nigerias operating under two sets of rules.
1. The Fundamental Inequity in Community Benefits and Ownership
The most egregious disparity lies in the treatment of host communities.
· The Niger Delta Experience (PIA): The PIA offers a paltry 3% of annual operational expenditure from oil companies for host communities, a figure we rejected as insulting given the decades of monumental environmental devastation and socio-economic neglect. Furthermore, this contribution is not from profit but from operational cost, and it is mandated to be managed through a Trust Fund, effectively sidelining elected state governments and traditional institutions, reducing them to “siddon lookers” in the words of Bayelsa State’s Deputy Governor. Crucially, the Act imposes a collective punishment clause, holding entire communities financially liable for vandalism of oil assets, a provision that is unjust, unconstitutional, and inflammatory.
· The Solid Minerals Regime: In stark contrast, the Mining Act mandates that operators conclude a Community Development Agreement (CDA) with their hosts, addressing scholarships, employment, infrastructure, and enterprise development. There is no collective punishment clause. Most tellingly, while the PIA reinforces the total federal ownership of oil, the Mining Act, though also declaring federal ownership, has historically tolerated artisanal and small-scale mining by individuals and cooperatives across northern and western states, allowing them to benefit directly from their resources without military intervention . This operational laxity grants a de facto economic participation that is ruthlessly denied to the people of the Niger Delta.
2. The Environmental and Remediation Double Standard
The approach to environmental protection and remediation further highlights the bias.
· In the Niger Delta: Despite the PIA’s provisions against gas flaring, it includes a dangerous loophole allowing the Minister to permit it, rendering the prohibition weak. The environmental degradation from decades of oil spills and gas flaring has been catastrophic, destroying livelihoods and poisoning our ecosystem. Yet, there has never been a comprehensive environmental clean-up funded by the federal government or operators, with the much-publicized Ogoni cleanup being haphazard at best.
· In the Solid Minerals Sector: The Mining Act explicitly requires license holders to minimize environmental impact and rehabilitate mined land to its natural or predetermined state . While enforcement is a challenge, the legal obligation is clear and unequivocal, lacking the ministerial loopholes present in the PIA.
3. Security and Militarization: An Occupied Territory vs. Business as Usual
This is the most chilling aspect of the disparity.
*The Niger Delta: Our region is effectively under military occupation. The government has deployed the Joint Task Force (JTF) Operation Restore Hope since 2002 to secure oil infrastructure and prevent local refining. This militarization turns our communities into war zones, with our people subjected to human rights abuses, all to protect oil assets while denying us the benefits from them.
*The Solid Minerals Sector: There is no JTF in mining states. Despite widespread illegal mining, the federal government only announced plans for mining marshals as recently as March 2024, and even that has not been fully activated. This represents a deliberate non-militarization of the solid minerals sector, allowing for a more permissive environment that stands in stark contrast to the repression in the Niger Delta.
4. The Grand Larceny of Resource Allocation: 3% vs. 30%
The PIA commits the ultimate act of resource injustice by allocating a meager 3% of OPEX to host communities who bear 100% of the burden, while allocating a whopping 30% of NNPC Ltd.’s profit to explore for oil in so-called “frontier basins”. These basins are predominantly located in the North. This means that the wealth generated from the Niger Delta’s suffering is being used to subsidize the search for oil in other regions, with no guarantee of success. This is not national development; it is state-sponsored resource colonialism.
Table: Summary of Legislative Disparacies Against the Niger Delta
POLICY AREA
1. Niger Delta (Petroleum Industry Act)
2. Solid Minerals Region (Mining Act)
3. Implied Status of the Niger Delta
HOST COMMUNITY BENEFITS
1. 3% of Operetor’s Annual OPEX (Operational Expenditure)
2. Community Development Agreements (CDA)
3. A cost center to be managed
ENVIRONMENTAL REMEDIATION
1. Weak penalties, ministerial loopholes, no comprehensive cleanup
2. Clear legal obligation for rehabilitation
3. A sacrifice zone
SECURITY APPROACH
1. Militarize (Joint Task Force)
2. Non-militarized (Planned Marshals)
3. An occupied territory
RESOURCE CONTROL
1. Absolute federal control, no local participation
2. De facto tolerance of local mining
3. A conquered territory
REVENUE ALLOCATION
1. Wealth diverted to Frontier Basin (30%)
2. Benefits Largely retained within region
3. A colony to be exploited
Conclusion and Demand
The evidence is irrefutable. The PIA and the Mining Act, when read side-by-side, reveal a Nigeria that operates a two-tiered system of resource justice. For the rest of Nigeria, there is a pretension of cooperation and benefit-sharing. For the Niger Delta, there is only extraction, militarization, and legislative neglect.
We, therefore, demand the following:
1. Immediate Legislative Harmonization: The National Assembly must initiate an amendment to the PIA to bring its community benefit provisions, environmental obligations, and ownership principles in line with the more equitable standards of the Nigerian Minerals and Mining Act. This includes, as a minimum, a review of the 3% and 30% allocations.
2. Demilitarization of the Niger Delta: The Federal Government must immediately withdraw the Joint Task Force from the Niger Delta and adopt a civil and regulated security approach, consistent with the approach in the solid minerals sectors.
3. True Federalism and Resource Control: The long-term solution to this perennial crisis is a return to the practice of true federalism and derivation-based resource control, as practiced in the First Republic, where regions managed their resources for their development.
The Niger Delta is not a colony of Nigeria. We can no longer accept laws that treat our people and our environment as sacrificial lambs for national unity. Enough is enough.
Signed:
Professor Benjamin Okaba
President, Ijaw National Congress (INC) Global