Posted by The Port Harcourt Telegraph on
More angry reactions are coming from the people of the Niger Delta region at home and abroad urging a peaceful split of the nation if the majority tribes continue to insist the South-South won't qualify to benefit from their God given wealth.
More angry reactions are coming from the people of the Niger Delta region at home and abroad urging a peaceful split of the nation if the majority tribes continue to insist the South-South won't qualify to benefit from their God given wealth.
The latest reactions posted to Telegraph's web site is from a relatively unknown group of Niger Deltans residing abroad.
The group which goes by the name Niger Delta Republic Movement expressed serious indignation, asking their compatriots at home, "why don't you consider separation very seriously and invest lots of energy to achieve it?"
The group went on, "The Islamic North has one and one reason only for liking Nigeria: and that reason is revenue allocation."
It stressed, "Many other communities in Nigeria also have the same reason and they support the North to lead them in enforcing revenue allocation. So, we can never get our demand through tribal democracy."
Until recently, only the Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force and the Niger Delta Peoples Salvation Front led by Alhaji Asari Dokubo have been in the vanguard of the request for a plebiscite which would allow ethnic nations within the Nigerian project to decide whether or not they would want to remain within the entity as it is now.
Asari, furious at the position of the North lamented that those who were not producing anything were now arrogating to themselves the right to decide what the owners of the resource that is keeping Nigeria together should have.
Agreeing with the NDPVF and the NDPSF on the issue of separation, the Niger Delta Republic Movement based in London thanked leaders of the region for standing up to the North and the rest of the country.
"Once again, we the people of the Niger Delta living abroad", they wrote, "congratulate you for the commendable manner in which you handled the issue of Revenue Allocation at the Obasanjo's (comic) Conference."
" It would have been inglorious if you had succumbed beneath the pressure and the fear that were mounted upon you by those who represented the large tribes and the rulers of the Islamic North", they said
" We are sure that you were able to understand how arrogant they are when it concerned the exploitation of our resources. They assume the right to mention any amount of revenue it pleases them to give to our people from our resources.
"Since from the turn of the last century, we in the Niger Delta have made Nigeria what it is.
"We gave it all the attribute that earn respectability and notice in the international world. So of the more than six ports in Nigeria, only one, Lagos is outside the Niger Delta. "None of the tribes large and small have anything like that. We enable Nigeria to have a Navy which is good enough to be invited to Portsmouth to celebrate the Naval battle of Nelson and Trafalgar.
"Now they are raping our land and resources, enjoying the epithet OIL RICH NIGERIA. We who give to Nigeria all its prestige and all its revenue, are treated just like aborigines and slaves."
The reaction of the London-based group was signed by Aliyi Ekineh and Godfrey Arumoh, Patron and Coordinator.