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Niger Delta Solidarity Campaign
C/o 74 Castlemaine House
Gulvert Road
London SW11 5BQ
E-mail: ndscampaign@yahoo.co.uk
Tel:07944542320

Rt. Hon Gordon Brown
The Prime Minister of Great Britain
10 Downing Street
London, SW1A 2AA

ACT NOW AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT OF NIGERIA AND ITS’ AGENDA OF ETHNIC CLEANSING OF THE PEOPLE OF THE NIGER DELTA

The Niger Delta Solidarity Campaign would like to remind the Prime Minister of his promise to the Nigerian Government on Wednesday, 9 July 2008 at the close of the meeting of the Group of Eight leading industrial nations in Japan. The promise was an offer of military assistance to the Nigerian Government to ‘help return law and order to the Niger Delta and to restore crude oil output’ (The Independent July 11, 2008). It would appear that the said military assistance was provided and the Nigerian Government has since used its upgraded military capability to unleash terror on the peace loving people of the Niger Delta.

On Wednesday 13 May 2009 the Nigerian Government put into action, its pre-planned strategy of ethnic cleansing of the ” 20 million people ” of the Niger Delta in order to make way for the easy access to the region’s oil and gas resources. On that day, the Joint Task Force (JTF) of the Nigerian Military attacked and bombed peaceful communities in Gbaranmatu Kingdom of Warri South Local Government Area (situated in the western Niger Delta) of Delta State. It is now public knowledge that the plan to ethnically cleanse the Niger Delta was hatched by top Nigerian Generals in 2007 (The Major General Ngubane Security Report July 2007). As we write this petition to you, numerous properties in Oporoza, Okerenkoko, Benikurukuru, Kurutie, Kunukunuma, Kokodiagbene, Azama and Ubefan have been destroyed and razed to the ground. Tens of hundreds have been killed and thousands have been displaced fled into the forest through Nigeria’s criminal use of force. This terror campaign that has been authorised by President Yar’Adua has already been extended to other parts of the central and eastern Niger Delta. This is a repeat performance of the Ogoni 1993 Killings and the Odi Massacre in 1999 by Nigerian soldiers, and numerous other incidents that have ignored by the international community.

Eyewitness accounts, local press reports and even the military own accounts, mention the use of military jets and helicopter gunships to drop bombs on the local Traditional Rulers Palace and other civilian residents of Oporoza in the pursuit of so-called militants. This criminal use of force by the armed forces demonstrates that there is an organised policy of the top echelons of the Yar’Adua administration to ethnically cleanse the Niger Delta of its indigenous people. A member of the Federal House of Assembly, Alhaji Bala N’Allah from the Northern part of Nigeria, justified the military onslaught against defenceless civilians in the Niger Delta, by saying that “If killing the 20 million population of the Niger Delta means saving the lives of the remaining 100 million, so be it”.

As the Prime Minister may well be aware, the Niger Delta is suffering from extreme abject poverty and lack of basic infrastructure in the midst of huge revenues (over a Trillion US Dollars) from 1958 till date, derived from oil and gas resources. The Niger Delta environment pays the price of oil and gas exploitation, continued gas flaring and ecological destabilisation. Indeed, the indigenous people of the Niger Delta have become endangered species in their own land, as a result of the environmental catastrophe they face every single day and because of the greedy lust for oil and gas resources by the Nigerian State. The people of the Niger Delta have suffered for too long from the always-corrupt Nigeria governments. The people do not deserve to be massacred for the oil that they derive no gain from. Only the politicians gain from Nigeria’s oil wealth. We say enough is enough

In order to prevent a repetition of the humanitarian tragedies during the Rwandan genocide and the Darfur (Sudan) ethnic cleansing episodes, the Niger Delta Solidarity Campaign is calling upon the British Government to

Stop any military assistance to the Nigerian Government due to the prevailing circumstances.

Prevail upon the Nigerian Government to stop its campaign of terror and genocide against Niger Delta communities.

The Prime Minister to fulfil his second promise to the Nigerian State, “to identify the persons and syndicates behind the trade in ‘blood oil” – the real criminals behind the instability in the Niger Delta. It is important that the Prime Minister should so as this would stop the bloodbath that is currently taking place in the Gbaranmatu Kingdom in the Western Delta and other parts of the oil-rich Niger Delta Region.

Prevail on the international community to use its combined authority to initiate criminal proceedings against officials of the Nigerian government who sanctioned and carried out the indiscriminate bombing of communities and the killing of innocent civilians all in the name of flushing out so called militants.

Use its political influence within the international arena to work with United Nations to declare the Niger Delta as a special area that is in need of protection from environmental exploitation and ethnic cleansing in light of past experiences and the present dire situation.

We have taken this opportunity to include with this petition, recent press statements from various organisations around the world concerning the plight of the people of the Niger Delta with specific reference to the most recent crises caused by the military attack on Gbaranmatu-Ijaw communities of Oporoza, Okerenkoko and smaller villages in the western Niger Delta.