Date Published: 05/26/09

May 18, 2009 PRESS RELEASE

IJAW FOUNDATION
IJAW SOLIDARITY, POWER, LIBERTY, PEACE AND PROGRESS

     IZON EBE SERI KENI WENI MO

STOP NIGERIA’S GENOCIDE AGAINST THE IJAWS OF THE NIGER DELTA: A CALL FOR IMMEDIATE GLOBAL ACTION 

We, the fifteen million aboriginal Ijaw people of the oil-rich Niger Delta hereby call on the world to save us immediately from the ongoing brazen high-intensity genocide being perpetrated against us by the extremely ungrateful Nigerian State that paradoxically depends on our Ijaw Oil Wealth for its sustenance and survival!

The Gbaramatu Kingdom of the Ijaw Nation was peacefully celebrating the installation of its Regent when it was atrociously attacked by the Nigerian military forces of occupation in the Niger Delta, the Joint Task Force (JTF), without any provocation, on Wednesday, May 13, 2009! The Nigerian State has since sent a military armada and several battalions of soldiers to Ijawland in a deliberate and calculated military onslaught to annihilate our Ijaw people. Please save our souls! Stop the ethnic cleansing!! Stop Nigeria’s extermination of the Ijaws!!!

We are anguished and appalled, beyond description, at the thousands of our unarmed, oppressed and suffering Ijaw civilians in the Gbaramatu Kingdom in Delta State that have been savagely (brutally) murdered or maimed, and the towns and villages that have been viciously decimated and ferociously razed, by aerial bombardments, grenade attacks, and artillery attacks from warships and naval gunboats. Tens of thousands of our people have been rendered homeless, and have fled into the bushes where they are hunted and slaughtered by the rampaging genocidal Nigerian military. Thousands of injured people cannot have access to much-needed live-saving emergency medical care because they are cut off from the outside world by the genocidal military siege, and are therefore dying helplessly!

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We hereby call on all humanitarian agencies worldwide, particularly the International Red Cross and the United Nations Committee on Refugees, to send relief materials and humanitarian workers to save and help the victims of the terrible humanitarian crisis.

It is universal knowledge that the Ijaws and Nigeria are engaged in a serious conflict that has been occasioned by the relentless ruthless oppression of the Ijaws by the Nigerian state. In response to our peaceful agitation for fairness, equity and self-determination, the Nigerian government has inflicted an ever-intensifying Genocidal Reign of Terror on our defenseless people. In the last decade, members of the Nigerian Security Forces, acting at the behest of the Nigerian government, have wrongfully and needlessly murdered thousands of Ijaws, raided and burnt Ijaw towns and villages, cruelly tortured many of our people, imprisoned several Ijaw Rights Activists and raped numerous Ijaw women and children; in response to our legitimate demands for a halt to our oppression, the wanton destruction of our habitat and looting of our God-given wealth.

The prevailing pervasive Ijaw Youth Restiveness and Insurgency are compelled and propelled by the imperative for survival and self-defense, in the Spirit of Isaac Adaka Boro, against the political subjugation and relentless ruthless oppression of the Ijaw people, unbridled plundering of their oil and gas resources, wanton destruction of their habitat and means of subsistence, their utter neglect and deprivation, atrocious violation of their basic human rights and dignity, continual heinous genocides perpetrated by an occupying military force of the Nigerian State that kills Ijaws with impunity, and resultant abominable squalor, hopelessness, despair and anarchy.

Ijaw Foundation , a platform for collective action by all Ijaws and all Ijaw organizations in the Diaspora and the Ijaw homeland, condemns in the strongest terms, the heinous genocide being committed against the Ijaws by the Nigerian State. We ask President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua and the Nigerian government to withdraw all military forces of occupation in the Niger Delta immediately. The Niger Delta Conflict is a political conflict and therefore demands a political solution rather than a military solution. The Ijaws want and demand a peaceful political solution to the Niger Delta Conflict.

We take this opportunity to reiterate that the Ijaws are extremely peace loving and longsuffering. We, the Ijaws, are engaged in a noble and legitimate agitation for Self Determination, socioeconomic justice, environmental protection and survival. We only claim, demand and defend that which is rightly and justly ours. Our motivation is love, our passion is justice, and our goal is peace. The Ijaws want peace in the Niger Delta, Nigeria and in the entire world.

Our oppressors are the advocates of violence because they are using guns and violence, military force and genocide, to keep us oppressed. No Ijaw person would take a gun to fight if the oppressive Nigerian State does not use military power or guns to repress us and deny us justice! A thief knows that it is wrong for him to take your personal property from you without your consent, and he knows that you will not allow him to do so, so he comes armed with a gun to coerce you to relinquish your property to him. Nigeria is committing armed robbery against the Ijaws. A thief comes to steal, kill and destroy. Nigeria is stealing our resources, killing us, and destroying our habitat and means of livelihood.

It is the most cruel irony of fate that our Ijaw people are being killed by Nigerian soldiers that arepaid, clothed, fed, housed and armed with our Ijaw Oil Money; to enable the Nigerian government and the Oil Companies to plunder our resources and destroy our habitat.The fighter jets, warships, naval gunboats, grenades, artillery and bombs being unleashed on our hapless Ijaw people are bought with the Ijaw oil money!It is unacceptable that our God-given wealth has become our inexorable curse!

It is the Nigerian State that has made dialogue and peaceful resolution of the Niger Delta Conflict impossible by militarizing Ijawland (occupying Ijawland with military troops), and ensuring that Ijaws who protest their oppression are murdered or imprisoned as a deterrent to other Ijaws. The murders of Dr. Marshall Harry and Chief Aminasori Dikibo as well as the imprisonment of Dokubo-Asari and other Niger Delta Activists are prime examples in this regard. No Ijaw person will carry gun to fight the Nigerian State if Nigeria withdraws all its military forces of occupation in Ijawland and allows Ijaws to express their grievances without harassment and intimidation. 

The world cannot sit idly by when the internationally affirmed and ratified fundamental human rights of the approximately fifteen million Ijaw people are being so egregiously and continuously violated by a signatory of the United Nations Charter. It would be an indefensible dereliction of duty if the United Nations does not act to uphold the sanctity of its Universal Declarations of Human Rights or fail to protect the oppressed and abused in any part of the world.

The Niger Delta Crisis has assumed epic global proportions and therefore calls for concerted international action. The adverse effect of the Niger Delta Crisis on global oil prices makes it imperative for concerted global action to resolve the crisis. Furthermore, it is important to note that the oppression being suffered by the Ijaws of the Niger Delta is arguably worse than that suffered by black South Africans during the terrible Apartheid Regime because, besides political subjugation, disenfranchisement, sub-humanization and dehumanization, the Ijaws also suffer resource plunder, environmental degradation and ecological genocide that were never suffered by black South Africans! As the world was rightly moved into action to stop the terrible oppression of black South Africa, the world must also act with urgency to stop the ruthless oppression of the Ijaws.

Similarly, the oppression that was suffered by the Kosovo people did not entail ecological genocide; it was less terrible than that being suffered by the Ijaws of the Niger Delta. Yet the people of Kosovo got the support of the United Nations and the international community for their self-determination. Just as the United Nations intervened in Kosovo to bring justice and peace, it should also intervene in the Niger Delta to bring justice and peace there!

To this end, as a matter of utmost urgency, we call on the international community, under the aegis of the United Nations, to orchestrate a peaceful resolution of the Niger Delta Crisis by enforcing an immediate demilitarization of the Niger Delta and by organizing Referendum on Ijaw Political Autonomy.

In his historic speech to his fellow Americans, the legendary Patrick Henry of blessed memory declared: “Give me liberty or give me death”! The United States of America was the torchbearer of liberty about two hundred and thirty-three years ago. Today, the Ijaws are proud to be the torchbearers of liberty.

This is a battle of good against evil. We are confident of the glorious triumph of good over evil! We are absolutely confident of our victory God has promised and decreed.

We call on all champions and lovers of freedom, and indeed the entire world, to join the Alliance for Freedom and stand with us against oppression. We call on the United Nations to convene an emergency meeting of its Security Council to take emergency action to stop the genocide against the Ijaws, as follows:

2.   Establish a United Nations Committee for Self-determination of the Ijaws to: (a) mediate our negotiations with the Nigerian State for our peaceful separation from Nigeria; (b) provide us with technical assistance to conduct our Referendum on Self-government; (c) oversee our transition to self-rule.

3.   Grant the Ijaws representation as an OBSERVER NATION in the United Nations     General Assembly (same status currently enjoyed by the Palestinians), pending our transition to self-rule. 

4.  Order the Nigerian government, by Security Council Resolution, to immediately withdraw all its military troops, submarines, gunboats and weaponry deployed to the Niger Delta to kill and repress the Ijaws.

5. Impose tough economic sanctions on Nigeria, including an absolute international embargo on Nigeria’s, oil until all Nigerian military forces in the Niger Delta are withdrawn.

Signed:

Dr. Ebipamone N. Nanakumo

President, Ijaw Foundation Board of Directors

Mr. Lincoln Snithers

Secretary, Ijaw Foundation Board of Directors

549 LEFFERTS AVENUE, BROOKLYN, NY 11225, USA* Phone & Fax: (718) 778-0536*

Website: www.ijawfoundation.org , Email: board_of_directors@ijawfoundation.org