(Being the position of the Lower Niger Congress on the main demand of the Niger Delta Avengers as well as the Biafra Restoration Agitations).
By a Statement issued Friday, 28 May, 2016, the Agitation Group known as the Niger Delta Avengers which is currently engaged in a face-off with the Federal Government of Nigeria in the oilfields of the Region, proclaimed the RESTORATION OF THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE OLD EASTERN REGION as their main demand.
The Territory referred to as the “Old Eastern Region” in the said Statement comprises of what is otherwise known today as the South South and the South East combined Geopolitical Zones, (a recent extra-constitutional coinage grouping States of Nigeria together).
That Territory, prior to the arrival of the British colonialists and the 1914 Amalgamation that lumped together a vast landscape reaching the Southern fringes of the Sahara Desert in the North, to form Nigeria, at the turn of the 20th Century, was generally described by historians as the Lower Niger Territory, home to a number of Indegenous Peoples including the Igbo, the Ijaw, the Itshekiri, the Efik, the Annang, the Ibibio, the Urhobo, the Ogoni, the Bini and several other sub-nationalities.
The said Lower Niger Territory as depicted by this 1885 Map which was adopted as the Geographical basis of the Prospective Lower Niger Federation by the SOLEMN ASSEMBLY OF THE PEOPLES OF THE LOWER NIGER IN PORT HARCOURT, 27TH APRIL 2015, is completely congruent with the so-called South East and South South of today (Old Eastern Region) over which the Niger Delta Avengers now demands the restoration of Sovereignty.
Whilst differing in methodology with the Niger Delta Avengers especially as relating to the use of force, the Lower Niger Congress identifies with this demand and would be prepared to present all parties with the Referendum Option, which removes violence from the scene, for addressing this volatile issue, provided All Stakeholders, especially the Federal Government, pull back from the use of force in approaching the dispute which the Lower Niger Congress sees as no more than Unaddressed Constitutional Grievances, capable of being resolved within the Context of Self-Determination by a Referendum.
It is pertinent to note that the raging Agitation for the restoration of Sovereign State of Biafra, also has this same Lower Niger geo-space as its subject Territory .
Same goes for the Lower Niger Congress which currently champions the evolvement of an Independent Lower Niger Federation in the Territory in view of the total collapse of the failed Nigerian Federation .
This confluence and convergence of pursuits and demands, is evidence of a Grand Consensus by the Peoples of the Territory to exit the defunct Nigerian Federation into future exclusively defined by them.
In considering the options available to the stakeholders, particularly, the Nigerian State, the Lower Niger Congress would prescribe an approach that begins with the stated demands of the Agitators, amply captured in their aforementioned Statement of Friday, 28th May, 2016 .
In terms of sequence of steps, the first urgent order of business is the broad commitment to recognize the dispute as a Constitutional Dispute that should be addressed within the Context of Self-Determination without recourse to further force or violence instead of its current wrong categorization as one of Security, Law and Order Enforcement.
A ceasefire can be anchored on these basics, while a framework is drawn up to negotiate a Transition that will allow a Referendum and the implementation of its outcome.
A lot can be borrowed from what the Government of Frederick W De Klerk did in 1990 to halt the wanton violence that crippled South Africa as Government Security Forces and the Anti-Apartheid Resistance wreaked violence in all directions.
It took one National Broadcast by a courageous Frederick De Klerk to announce to a shocked Global Audience that the Apartheid Constitutional Order would have to be jettisoned and replaced by a negotiated all inclusive alternative.
Nigeria’s choices in this matter had in the past 49 years since after Aburi, gone from WHICH FEDERATING MODEL to NO FEDERATION AT ALL as shown by the Niger Delta Avengers’ demand, leaving only the matter escalating or minimizing violence the reconfiguration of the failed, toxic Union.
View the youtube title “LOWER NIGER CONGRESS ON THE BIAFRA QUESTION” Visit the website http://www.lnc-usa.org
Tony Nnadi
Secretary-General
Lower Niger Congress.
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