These Documents which were widely publicized had each been advertised in Nigeria’s National Dailies including the Guardian, Thisday, Vanguard and Sun apart from several online publications. This is just to assure us that the contents have been in the public domain.
By way of Summarizing the 6 Documents, and to situate their contents within the Igbo Quo Vadis Debate, I will list each with short comment on what they represent.
(1) ALADINMA EPISTLE:
This was a 2012 publication of Aladinma, which is the Igbo Caucus of the Lower Niger Congress. In that Epistle, the Igbo perspective to the whole Nigeria Question was dissected, from Diagnosis, Prescription and Treatment Process, already ongoing. This Document also made public the ASSET PROTECTION AND GUARANTEE SCHEME, emplaced by the LNC to avoid a repeat of the 1970 Abandoned Property saga in respect of Igbo Assets situate outside the Eastern Nigeria.
(2) THE MNN LAGOS DECLARATION OF JUNE 30, 2011,
which was a repudiation of the 1999 Constitution and the Proclamation of the formations for post-Nigeria arrangements and Protocols, Jointly issued by the LNC and its Countrywide Partners under the banner of Movement for Nigeria (MNN), an undertaker platform for the defunct Federation of Nigeria that collapsed since 1966.
(3) COUNTRY-WIDE REJECTION OF THE 1999 CONSTITUTION.
Issued 2012 by the LNC as the most detailed xray of the Constitutional evolution of Nigeria from its inception in 1914 to the 1999 Constitution, tracing and dissecting the basis and pillars of the Federation which are now truncated and for which reason the entrapped Nationalities of the Lower Niger, as well as others reject the 1999 Constitution as the basis of Nigeria and its “Democracy”.
The Document also examines the options and processes for the Reconstruction of the Federation of Nigeria (Restructuring, if you like).
(4) RESOLUTIONS OF THE SOLEMN ASSEMBLY OF THE OF THE PEOPLES OF THE LOWER NIGER IN PORT HARCOURT, 27TH APRIL 2015;
This Document is a Process Action, in which Accredited Delegates of the Ethnic Nations of the Lower Niger Resolved to take the Question of the Future of the Territory to a General Referendum of the Peoples of the Territory, adopting the 1885 Ethnolinguistic Map of the Territory as the Geographical basis of the prospective Lower Niger Federation which may enter fresh Protocols with willing, compatible contiguities.
(5) LOWER NIGER CONGRESS SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT ON THE REGISTRATION OF 3MILLION REFERENDUM VOLUNTEERS.
This Document, issued 1st January, 2017 by the LNC, pursuant to the Advise of the Referendum Lobbyists and Advisors, as substantial progress has been made in the efforts securing the UN imprimatur on the Lower Niger Referendum.
(6) THE BIAFRA QUESTION: A CASE FOR SELF-DETERMINATION REFERENDUM
This Document was issued by the LNC November 5, 2015 at the peak of the Biafra Agitation Street actions in Eastern Nigeria. It was on the basis of this Document that MASSOB accepted to scale down further Street Actions in pursuit of their objective, thenceforth deploying its energies towards the alternative Route, being Lower Niger Referendum as framed by the LNC.
I will request all who can, to take the trouble to read through the obviously lengthy Documents, if only to get a firmer grasp of the unseen dynamics driving the Nigeria Debate.
A review of two YouTube titles will also help a great deal. They are titled “LOWER NIGER CONGRESS ON THE BIAFRA QUESTION” and “NIGERIA AT THE VALLEY OF DECISION”.
The later squarely takes on the Issue of Restructuring of Nigeria from the perspective of Eastern Nigeria, in a manner that leave the dissolution of Nigeria as the Default.
End. Next are the Documents.
Document 1
THE ALADINMA EPISTLE 2012
(Issued to the Global Media at a World Press Conference, 30th May, 2012 being the 45th Anniversary of the Self-Preservation Declaration of the Sovereign State of Biafra by the Peoples of Eastern Nigeria, in the face of a Genocidal onslaught against the Region by the rest of Nigeria. Published unedited as a Full paid Advertorial in the Sun Newspaper of June, 21, 2012)
Protocols.
As Nigeria wobbles in the throes of what seems its terminus and as the various federating blocs continue to explore options for their political future, a research-based review of the odyssey of the Igbo in Nigeria from inception to date intended to birth an action plan for societal reconstruction of Ala-Igbo, anchored on the pristine Igbo value system, was discreetly undertaken by a younger generation of NdIgbo under the code-name, ALADINMA over a 12 year period.
That initiative has not only diagnosed the Igbo question correctly but has attracted a considerable mass of adherents with the clarity, commitment, courage and capacity to drive the change process required to completely re-engineer the Igbo society within a reconfigured political structure and though youth-driven, ALADINMA had the privilege of working with a select few of the older generation including Dim Chukwuemeka-Odumegwu Ojukwu, Chief C.C. Onoh and one other person who is still contributing. The trio gave their all to the Project.
As dictated by the wider constitutional dimensions of the Project, ALADINMA reached out to other ethnic nationalities, co-suffering with the Igbo in the failed British experiment we call Nigeria such that in blocs of cohesive formations, they are in consensus, working out constitutional arrangements that would peacefully ease out the current imposed constitutional order which is the source of the nightmare Nigeria has become for its peoples including the Igbo.
The ALADINMA ideal, in time, evolved into an organized movement, quietly coordinating the Igbo arm of the LOWER NIGER CONGRESS (LNC, an initiative to Federate the peoples of the former Eastern and Mid-Western Region into a prospective LOWER NIGER FEDERATION in readiness for the inevitable constitutional reconstruction of Nigeria).
BASIS OF INTERVENTION:
It is an open secret that the Nigerian war against Biafra did not end in 1970. Battlefields merely shifted to other fronts; post-war asset seizures, targeted infrastructural decay, glass ceiling in public service and remotely-orchestrated electoral heists which enthrone mainly societal renegades in power, all render Igboland the jungle it has become.
For the Igbo, the constitutional regime in place today (the so-called 1999 Constitution), is basically a codification of the terms of conquest by Nigeria and its foreign sponsors, to permanently control the war booty (one-Nigeria) via a carefully choreographed constitutional order in which a contrived political majority, created by imposed states and local government structures, arrogantly preside over the lives and assets of a numerical majority who are now a negligible political minority (the Igbo), with a 68-item Federal Exclusive Legislative List which firmly put in the hands of the contrived political majority, absolute control of the levers of development and governance.
The so-called States are mere administrative appendages groveling at feet of an almighty Federal Government, constitutionally forbidden and incapacitated from doing many things including generation and transmission of electricity, internal security (police), railways, ports, highways etc; all the 68 items.
This is the exact opposite of the Federal basis upon which Nigeria became one Country at independence as each of the then federating units had its own Constitution and developed at its own pace using its own resources and contributing towards the upkeep of the center (Federal Government) for the limited functions jointly delegated to the center. All that changed in 1966 by the military intervention in governance. The negotiated Constitutions that defined Nigeria were sacked and replaced by a series of Decrees culminating in the Decree 24 of 1999 which is now called the 1999 Constitution.
Nigeria under the current Constitutional Order thus represent a master-servant reality, worse than the apartheid constitutional order in the then South-Africa.
ALADINMA REJECTS THAT NIGERIA DEFINED BY THE 1999 CONSTITUTION.
The agitation for a renegotiation of Nigeria through a Sovereign National Conference is met by plain obduracy, typified by Ibrahim Babangidas doctrine of SETTLED ISSUES to rudely remind all the agitators for change in Igboland and the rest of Niger-Delta that the terms of the Nigerian Union were settled in the battlefields of Biafra which claimed over 3.5 million lives. It is like ordering the Igbo and the Niger-Delta to shut up, keep quiet and remain in their enslavement or risk being killed again. This confirms that the current Constitution is the victory charter of Nigeria over the peoples of Eastern Nigeria, legitimizing the confiscation of their sovereign rights and assets. The ACF by an advertorial in the Daily Sun of February 3, declared that the terms of our Union and those by which the Nigerian Federation are run have been well defined in our Constitution. ALADINMA says to ACF: We have not discussed. That unilateral definition will not stand.
In tow, Crown Prince Mohammed Buhari recently proclaimed that if he is not coronated in the 2015 electoral round, blood will flow. This position was promptly supported by the 19 Northern Governors who despite being of the PDP, queued behind the Buhari position, openly ridiculing, intimidating and humiliating President Jonathan. The ACN, which is in open merger talks with Buharis CPC also agree with Buhari. The map of that alliance resembles that of Nigeria in August 1967.
In searching for the source of the arrogance displayed by our conquerors, ALADINMAs probe into the past led it to the Mission Statement and Battle Script of Sir Ahmadu Bello to his lieutenants in the North, one week after Independence in October, 1960 where, in celebration of a different kind, he declared to them that:
“The new nation called Nigeria should be an estate of our great-grandfather, Uthman Dan Fodio. We must ruthlessly prevent a change of power. We use the minorities of the North as willing tools and the South as a conquered territory and never allow them to rule over us, and never allow them to have control over their future.” Parrot Newspaper, 12th Oct. 1960.
The reason for the Sardauna’s celebration was laid bare by the recently declassified official records of the British Colonial enterprise in Nigeria, containing evidence of the massive manipulations by which the British created a political majority from a phantom numerical majority, permanently enslaving Southern Nigeria by constitutional gerrymandering.
In all, what the British did in 1960 was to cleverly transfer the suzerainty (the right of a country to rule over another country), which it had enjoyed over the territory, Nigeria, for over a century to a favoured local agent, the Fulani, packaging same as independence. Thus while the rest of Nigeria celebrated what they thought was the full restoration of their sovereignty, the truth was that they had merely transited from external to internal colonialism, Animal Farm style!.
The attempt by Biafra to get truly independent saw the British leading their local agents to ruthlessly crush the attempt. The Ogoni, Ijaw, and the Yoruba have each tasted of this ruthlessness. We hold nothing against Britain as they merely did what was then in vogue.
The 1999 Constitution which represents the full implementation of the 1960 Sardaunas feudal Battle Script today vests that same suzerainty in the ruling class in Nigeria while the sovereignty of the peoples remain banished in chains. That is why the political office holders are not accountable to the people just like the white minority of South Africa were not accountable to the oppressed black owners of the land and until we dismantle the apartheid-like 1999 Constitution, we will remain slaves while the politicians who rape the land barren are legally put beyond reach for sanction by absolute immunity.
We cannot have democracy under such a constitution just as was the case in apartheid era South Africa since no matter how free and fair elections may be, the fraudulent ownership and control structures in the Constitution already substantially exclude the Igbo masses and those of the Niger-Delta, even if one their own gets to the seat of power.
It is evident that by the deliberate sustained actions and manipulations of those who do not wish us well, spanning many decades, Igboland is today desolate; bereft of basic infrastructure; saddled with a polluted value system in which Nigeria rewards the very abominations NdIgbo abhor; a compromised security situation in which kidnapping which carried capital punishment in traditional Igbo society has been planted and nurtured into a booming business in Igboland since the first case in which a sitting Governor Ngige was kidnapped by a serving Assistant Inspector-General of Police, Raphael Ige. The list is endless and only a lunatic of an investor will prefer to head East. All these were a continuation of the war on the East.
Still digging into the past, ALADINMAs findings on the suspicion-ridden relationship between the Igbo and our Niger-Delta brothers show that the bad blood which our joint tormentors had capitalized on all these years to divide and rule us from afar, did not start with the civil war. We must recall that after victories in Regional elections a decade before the war, having been ousted by Awolowo from becoming the first Premier of the Western Region in the famous carpet crossing saga, Azikiwe went to the East and ousted Eyo Ita, an Eastern minority element who led the party to victory and who ought to have been the first Premier of Eastern Region.
The bitterness engendered by that single stroke of political injustice was at the root of the attitude of the Eastern minorities (todays Niger-Delta) in the bloody disputes of 1966-7 which became war. This bad blood was the biggest undoing of Biafra when it mattered most but the first blame must rest squarely on Azikiwe and his henchmen who triggered it all. We still live with the retaliations to date at great costs in blood and material.
ALADINMA hereby apologizes on behalf of our fathers to the peoples of the Niger-Delta for that wrongdoing that ruined the brotherly relationship we had from time immemorial and which was reason Eyo Ita could be Leader of a Party that won elections in the then Eastern Region.
ALADINMA notes that even in the face of the unfortunate situation, a great number of gallant combatants from the Niger-Delta fought on the side of Biafra with all their might to the bitter end. They were killed in great numbers before and during the war. Families were divided to the point of fatality on the question of support for Biafra.
The Asaba massacre by Murtala Mohammed troops stand tall in infamy in human history. It was not by accident that General Phillip Effiong was the second-in-command to Ojukwu who had the onerous task of surrendering in January 1970 to end the genocide. We also ask the Igbo who suffered terribly from what they considered the treachery of the Niger-Delta to forgive the past even for the sake of those who stood by us to the point of death and for our future.
On a happy note, ALADINMA can proudly report that a younger generation of the Niger-Delta reviewed the entire history and have since resumed the full depth of unconditional brotherhood we had before Nigeria intervened in the 1950s . Some evidence of this can be found in the advertorials taken out by an organization by name NIGER-DELTA OCCUPY NIGER-DELTA RESOURCE in January in which the Convener, Ann Kio Briggs called on the peoples of Niger-Delta to come home and join hands with the Igbo in strength, justice, brotherhood and truth, to face the obvious change that will come to Nigeria, since Nigerian conquerors had rejected one of their own, Goodluck Jonathan, as President. (Vanguard, January. 15th, 2012).
The zealous Niger-Delta participation in the burial of Ojukwu also shocked those who thought they had succeeded in dividing the Igbo and their Niger-Delta brothers. ALADINMA and LNC have worked out a novel design to finally inter the ghost of abandoned property in a manner that monetize outstanding interests whilst preserving existing titles.
IN RESPONSE TO NIGERIAS CONTINUING AGGRESSION , ALADINMA in cooperation with other forces of liberty, devised a 5-phased plan to dismantle and ease out the evil feudal constitutional order. The first 3 phases involved working out an alternative, building a consensus around that alternative by way of an informal referendum and the formal legal incapacitation of the 1999 Constitution.
All these have been done by way of the PRONACO initiative which outcome comprehensively revalidated the ABURI ACCORD model by the Ethnic Nationalities at a Sovereign meeting (2005-2006), as the minimum condition for continuing in the Nigerian Union, failing which exit options will be explored.
The MOVEMENT FOR NEW NIGERIA which is the implementation phase of the PRONACO outcome has carried out a successful countrywide informal referendum and in May 2007 launched the winding-up Suit against the 1999 Constitution on the ground of self-evident fraud, with Antony Enahoro, C.C Onoh, Dim Chukuemeka-Odumegwu Ojuwku, Prof Wole Soyinka, Bishop Bolanle Gbonigi, Prince Tanimose Bankole-Oki, Ralph Uwaruruike and Dokubo Asari as some of the Plaififfs. To date, Nigeria has no answer to this fatal challenge on the sole legal instrument holding the Union together, and so the entrapped ethnic nationalities are at liberty to retrieve their sovereignties on their own terms, within or outside the Nigerian Union.
The 4th phase commenced June 30th, 2011 with the MNN Declaration which followed the post-election violent rejection of the same 1999 Constitution and democracy by Boko Haram at a time the 12 Northern-most States of Nigeria had adopted Sharia since year 2000 which is tantamount to opting out of the Nigerian Union. ALADINMA posits that it is now practically impossible to retain Nigeria as one political Union since nobody can force those 12 States to abandon Sharia to embrace democracy/constitutionalism nor can anyone force the rest of Nigeria to embrace Sharia and abandon democracy/constitutionalism. The two are mutually exclusive and this leaves everybody with only one option: to accept that the Nigerian Union has collapsed and allow the peaceful exit of cohesive Units who thereafter work new relationships.
By the infinite mercies of God, since that sole title-deed by which our sovereignty is detained by Nigeria, (the 1999 Constitution), has been exposed as a forgery and a fraud in court, (to the extent that Abdusalam Abubakar made it and lied that we the people did), and since the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of indigenous Peoples, invest us (the ethnic nationalities) with an inalienable right to self-determination, ALADINMA, working with its Project Partners, particularly, the LOWER NIGER CONGRESS, will within the said UN instrument, vigorously pursue the retrieval of our sovereign rights over our geo-space, in rejection of further perpetuation of fraud therein in the name of Nigeria.
Furthermore, in the aftermath of Ojukwus momentous exit, everybody confessed that Ojukwu was right in the bloody debates of 1966-1970, thus acknowledging both ABURI and BIAFRA as appropriate and legitimate responses. ALADINMA now asks: if Ojukwu was right, is it right to keep Nigeria the unitary way we wrong-headedly and ruinously kept it all these 45 years?. Having embraced the truth, is it not time to act on it by reworking the Union in a manner that restore the hijacked autonomies of the entrapped nations either ABURI model (confederation) or ARABA (full independence for units).
In this cross-roads situation, the question on every lip was: where does the Igbo go from here?. Even our enemies, as if in pity for a group of orphaned children, joined in asking this question which roughly translates to, where will these directionless Igbo go and who will lead them?, since Ojukwus demise dramatically exposed a long-standing leadership vacuum in Igboland. In seeking credible answers, the first step will of course be to define what Igbo interests are in the Nigeria of today. The next will be to draw up an agenda and road-map to pursue those interests; the last would then be the question of who and who will lead the charge. The replacement for Ojukwu cannot be by clownish buffoonery.
It is in the light of the foregoing that ALADINMA today steps forward to lead the task of total societal reconstruction of Igboland on the basis of the core Igbo value system which place truth above falsehood at all times; which place excellence above mediocrity; which reward hard-work and punish laziness and which place merit above pedigree. We shall restore the traditional Igbo sanction system, to curtail the excesses of those who have become stronger than oha.
In stepping forward at this time, ALADINMA has substantially concluded its consultations with all segments of the Igbo society at home and abroad particularly the grass-root populations regarding what the strategic Igbo pursuit should be at this time in Nigeria, between going for Presidential power in 2015 and seeking to end the constitutional enslavement of the Igbo in Nigeria. An overwhelming majority of our people are in favour of the latter i.e going for liberty and not power under the current Constitution and ALADINMA intends to the lead them in that path.
If we go for power and miraculously succeed (the chances are simply nil as things stand), no doubt, a few people will make billions, probably in dollars, but the constitutional framework which enslave the Igbo will remain intact to enslave the rest of us, our children and grandchildren while if we go for liberty and succeed (and success is now guaranteed in the face the aforesaid UN instrument and Nigeria’s dying 1999 Constitution), we immediately throw off the yoke of enslavement which has been around our necks for over a century, to our eternal benefit.
ACCORDINGLY, WE DECLARE THAT:
The best interest of the Igbo in the Nigeria of today lies in pursuing the constitutional unshackling of its people and not in pursuing the Presidency of Nigeria under the present Constitution nor will the creation of one more lame state alter the overall equation of our gross marginalization.
ALADINMA completely agrees with the assertion of President Jonathan in Udi recently that the problems of Nigeria flow from its very foundations in 1914 and the manipulations around 1960 and that the solution to the intractable problems must be for us to go and find out what went wrong in those periods. ALADINMA and its Change Partners have done just that. It is left for Government and other stakeholders to embrace the result.
ALADINMA will in conjunction with its Change Partners, mobilize the Igbo and others who feel the same way to demonstrate their rejection of the current enslaving, feudal constitutional order by declining any further participation in elections conducted under the evil 1999 Constitution starting with the one of 2015.
To avoid anarchy, ALADINMA prescribes that all those in power at all levels in the three arms of government should remain in office until the transition to a new constitutional order is completed, just like South Africa did when it had to transit away from the apartheid Constitution between 1990 and 1994.
Any Igbo son or daughter who decides to pursue public office under the current Constitution will by that act present himself or herself as an enemy of the people and will attract communal frown and sanction.
A 90-day window from the date of this publication will be open to extend consultations to those who may for one reason or the other, not have been reached so far and we invite such persons or groups to contact us. Sanctions will not commence until after that period.
ALADINMA is guided by the example of Nelson Mandela and his compatriots, who, confronted with a similar evil, were honest enough to tell the blacks of apartheid era South Africa that their misery did not flow from people in power per se, but from the apartheid order which took their lands and rights away. They, by action refused to validate it any further.
For the men of God in the land who constantly recommend prayers as the solution to the Nigeria that stands on the foundation of injustice and gross inequity, ALADINMA wishes to point you to Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, who faced with a similar evil, stood on the side of truth and fought side-by-side with the oppressed peoples of South Africa until the evil Constitution of apartheid was overcome. We have a Constitution that lied that we the people enacted our damnation; instead of joining hands with the peoples to uproot evil, many of us join hand with Gowon and the rest of the criminal band with much blood in their hands to pray for Nigeria that has become a criminal enterprise, whose Constitution creates and protects monumental corruption. As poverty and misery grind your flock, the masses to death, a choice has to be made now: to side the truth or falsehood. Yes we must pray but let us also declare the truth concerning Nigeria now.
Same goes for the lawyers in the land who clutch that evil Constitution and fail to tell the politicians the truth. Woe unto those doing this for when the crash comes, the blood of the innocent will be on the heads of those who helped conceal the truth. Mandela was an honest lawyer who chose to use his knowledge of law free his people. What are our lawyers doing?.
In closing, we wish to commend the efforts of OHANEZE NDIGBO for holding the fort in the socio-cultural arena. ALADINMA steps in today to do the difficult non-partisan political bit.
We also commend the sacrificial, pioneering efforts of MASSOB and its leader, Chief Ralph Uwazuruike in the quest for self-redemption. As Chief Uwazuruike steps into other roles beyond MASSOB, ALADINMA notes that injuries may have been inflicted in course of the uncharted route of a liberation struggle such as theirs but we plead with all to forgive any such injuries as a sacrificial contribution for freedom. We also urge the MASSOB foot-soldiers to take advantage of the United Nations instrument legitimizing self-determination to reconstruct their struggle and halt further casualties in pursuing what is now the legitimate right of indigenous peoples everywhere in the world. Kosovo has moved from Serbia, South Sudan from Sudan, Scotland is awaiting a referendum to leave the UK.
With the experiences of the past and in readiness for the fall-outs of the impending change, ALADINMA has worked out with LNC an offshore-based ASSET PROTECTION AND GUARANTEE SCHEME to ensure that Igbo assets and those of the rest of LOWER NIGER will not be lost by the owners (at least in value), on account of any changes in Nigeria.
Information on the modalities for inventory and other steps will be made public in the coming days.
ALADINMA requests all Igbo groups, organizations and individuals who agree with our position on the Igbo priority to please speak up as quickly as possible so that we can demonstrate the majority support which our consultations showed. Phone calls, e-mails and visits to our website are platforms to register support for, or engage with our position. Persons and organizations interested in joining the movement or supporting it otherwise can do so online on http://www.aladinma.org
LONG LIVE NDIGBO WORLDWIDE. LONG LIVE THE PEOPLES OF THE LOWER NIGER.
Signed for and on behalf of the ALADINMA Board of Custodians this 30th day ;of May, 2012:
TONY NNADI.
CHIJIOKE ASOGWA.
Document 2
MOVEMENT FOR NEW NIGERIA
THE FAILED STATE CALLED NIGERIA: OUR STAND
Being text of a Joint Declaration by the Lower Niger Congress, the Federation of Oodua People and the Middle Belt Congress at a World Press Conference held on June 30th 2011 at Lagos
We, the undersigned Representatives of:
The LOWER NIGER CONGRESS, made up of indigenes of The Lower Niger, (the Homeland of the ethnic nationaliities of the former Eastern and Mid-western Regions of Nigeria), involved in the mission of evolving a LOWER NIGER FEDERATION,
The FEDERATION OF OODUA PEOPLES, made up of indigenes of Oodua Land (the Homeland of the Yoruba ethnic nationality of the former Western Region of Nigeria,) involved in the mission of evolving an OODUA PEOPLES FEDERATION,
The MIDDLE BELT CONGRESS, made up of indigenes of the Middle-Belt (the Homeland of the ethnic nationalities of the former Northern Region of Nigeria, excluding the Sharia territories)
involved in the mission of evolving a MIDDLE-BELT FEDERATION;
now collaborating under the aegis of MOVEMENT FOR NEW NIGERIA (MNN) in its quest to facilitate the reconstruction of the Nigerian Federation, have chosen this time to address the burning issues of the tottering Nigerian Union.
The aforementioned territories, all being parts of the Nigerian Project, having over many years variously expressed our dis-satisfaction with the Project and having called upon the Nigerian Authorities, who have each time turned deaf ears, to provide an opportunity for dialogue between all the entrapped ethnic nationalities participating in the Project, albeit under various forms of force, in view of the total collapse of the Project, are constrained to state as follows:
WHEREAS
“Our forebears were not Nigerians; they were ethnic peoples, who inhabited their own homelands with well-defined territories, waterways and resources of their own; with their customs, traditions and governments, before the amalgamation in 1914 that absorbed them into an artificial State known as Nigeria. Prior to the advent of British colonisation, they occupied and exercised unfettered and inalienable sovereignties over their respective homelands. It is the inalienable occupational rights of our forebears over their homelands that subsequently gave us the citizenship of Nigeria under the Independence Federal Constitution. Our consent ceding some of our sovereignties to a Federal Union, was first truncated then subsequently carried forward, time and time again, by force, culminating in the forceful imposition of the fraudulent 1999 Constitution.
Colonisation, which truncated our inherited sovereignties, resulted in the abrogation of the control over our lands and waterways which we inherited from our forebears and in the carting away of our resources. In 1960, the British relinquished our usurped sovereignties and returned our lands, waterways and resources and we agreed to continue with the British Nigerian Project only as federating units, parts and members of a Federal Union, each with its own Constitution. In 1966, the Military interevened in governance, sacking the said voluntarily worked out and agreed Constitutions and, once more, truncated our sovereignties, confiscated our lands, waterways and resources and forcefully re-introduced survelliance over them.
At the seeming exit of the Military in 1999, instead of returning our sovereignties, lands, waterways and resources, like the British did, some predators, in the name of the same Military, by subterfuge, continued in the uruspation of all our sovereignties, lands, waterways and resources, pursuant to a single, again imposed, 1999 Constitution, which they nevertheless fraudulently proclaimed was made by We the people and given to ourselves; secondly, proclaimed Federal, notwithstanding the absence of federating units and their individual constitutions and thirdly, proclaimed that we had all joined in the creation of a centre to which we had ceded all our sovereign rights, pursuant to which 68 items were placed on the Federal Exclusive Legislative List with a further 30 items Concurrent List of the so-called Constitution, in which the Centre enjoys over-riding powers, thus subjecting us to internal colonisation by reserving the right to provide or not provide electricity, railways, security, highways and access to ports, etc., by taking control of our natural resources, including oil and gas, on the false claim that we had ceded all our natural resources to the centre.
Further intent upon deceit, the so-called Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy in Chapter II of the 1999 Constitution, political and economic objectives, proclaimed, among other things that: sovereignty belongs to the people of Nigeria from whom government through this Constitution derives all its powers and authority; that the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government; that the Federal Republic of Nigeria shall be a State based on the principles of democracy and social justice; “that the participation by the people in their government shall be ensured in accordance with the provisions of this constitution; that there shall not be a predominance of persons from a few states or from a few ethnic or other sectional groups in government or in any of its agencies and that the affairs of government or its agencies shall be conducted so as to recognise the diversity of peoples.
Successive governments have breached each and every one of the foregoing provisions towards the peoples of the Lower Niger, Oodua Land and the Middle Belt, with impunity. We assert that the 1999 Constitution was imposed in breach of our sovereignties; that the country is organised on the basis of a master-servant relationship in which merit is thrown to the dogs and that there is a palpable class structure importing first class citizenship for some and behind whom the peoples of the Lower Niger, Oodua Land and the Middle Belt must queue to find relevance.
Apart from acquiescing in participating in the true Federal System that succeeded colonialism in 1960, our forebears and us were never subdued in any war with any other inhabitant(s) of Nigeria, let alone being subjugated in any post-war negotiations, yet, we have known no other fate in the Nigerian Project other than the brazen denial of access to any meaningful participation in the affairs of Nigeria. This has manifested in a variety of ways:
The refusal by those who have usurped our rights which Independence retrieved from the British, particularly the right to participate in constitution-making to determine the acceptable minimum standards of political, social and economic engagement and to allow us participate in shaping our own destinies;
the confiscation and exposure of our resources to a sharing formula that compromise our sovereignties and ownership;
the refusal by our unknown conquerers to allow us participate in choosing the type of government, Presidential or Parliamentary, acceptable to us in our relationship with our fellow countrymen;
the determination of our fate from far far away places by people we really do not know and with whom we share nothing at all in common other than an inglorious colonial past and an inscrutable and fabricated 1999 Constitution.
As we lamented our plight through the foregoing indignities, we wondered how we came by such a dilemma in a relationship supposedly amongst equals, only recently to stumble upon the reason for our fate: On the 13th of November, 2002, the Tribune Newspaper had cause to recall Sir Ahmadu Bellos admonition in October 1960, to the descendants of Uthman Dan Fodio, reported in the Parrot Newspaper of 12th October, 1960:
“The new nation called Nigeria should be an estate of our great grandfather Uthman Dan Fodio. We must ruthlessly prevent a change of power. We use the minorities in the North as willing tools and the South as a conquered territory and never allow them to rule over us and never allow them to have control over their future”.
In order to be fully cognisant of its purport, it is necessary to put that admonition, which is no less than a Battle Order, in its proper perspective. By that admonition, Sir Ahmadu Bello created three categories of Nigerians: First Class Nigerians the inheritors of Nigeria as an estate of Uthman Dan Fodio; Second Class Nigerians the willing tools, who are the same as the minorities in the North, to be used by the inheritors as tools and Third Class Nigerians the whole of Southern Nigeria, alias: the conquered territory, who are no more than Slave Boys, who must never be allowed to control their own future, let alone be allowed to rule over the inheritors.
Both implicitly and explicitly, Ahmadu Bellos Battle Order is the Oracle for unravelling:
why the inheritors insist that Nigeria is an indissoluble Marriage made in Heaven;
why whatever manner of candidate the inheritors present is good enough as President;
why the almajaris of the inheritors could not stomach the audacity of the Nigerian Authorities subjecting their Crown Prince, Buhari, to a contest based upon the stupid game called Democracy; worse still expose him to defeat by a slave boy from a people who must neither be allowed to rule over the inheritors;
why, Aburi, which, General Gowon, a Head of State, but still no more than a willing tool at the disposal of the inheritors, in an attempt to achieve true and fiscal federalism and return Nigeria to the consensual project that it was in 1960 at Independence, laboriously negotiated and agreed with slave-boy Ojukwu, was scuttled twice in 1967 and 1974.
why the three Regions of the South at Independence had to become only 17 States against the one Region of the Norths 19 States and 1 Federal Territory; the latter garneering to itself a majority in the National Assembly and a greater number of the 774 Local Government structure enshrined in the 1999 Constitution; all structured to enable inheritors keep a larger piece of a cake to which they contribute nothing;
why the Northern Blueprint for any Structural Re-arrangement of Nigeria, has the States and Local Government Areas enshrined in the 1999 Constitution as no-go areas.
why Yakassai, Ciroma, General Babangida and Atiku cannot stomach PDPs winning formula which handed over its Presidential Ticket to a Slave Boy from the South.
This true perspective of the Battle Order shows Obasanjos first coming; Shonekans anointing and Obasanjos second coming, all of which were made possible by inheritor-godfatherism, for the abberation that they were.
Not knowing that our fate was the direct implementation of a Battle Order, we, in our ignorance, kept insisting upon restructuring. On hind-sight, the whole episode has been an on-going 96 years tragedy now legitimised by a 1999 Constitution that is a ploy by which erstwhile fellow victims of colonialism turned predators, planned to exercise perpetual control over our lands, rivers, resources, our lives and the lives of our generations yet unborn.
We have now come to the realisation that we have stood and folded our arms for too long as if we are in captivity, whilst our resources are plundered, hacked and carted away to far away places for the betterment of other people and to our detriment; our environment is despoiled while we are being reduced to a state of poltical extinction, inspite of our huge contributions to the Nigerian economy. On the whole, nothing works under the 1999 Constitution, resulting in failed everything: education, health care, electric power, roads, food security, personal security and job security; all of which breed unemployed and restive youths.
As if the foregoing traumas were not enough, following upon a Slave Boy assuming the mantle of leadership after the 2011 Presidential Election, the inheritors, refusing to accept the verdict of the Electorate, resorted to the unprovoked murder of our siblings claiming and insisting: that they do not accept Democracy as a form government; that Sharia Law must apply in the twelve states in which inheritor voters voted and in which their inheritor candidate, Buhari, won and that Justice is not possible under the 1999 Constitution; for which reasons they have resiled from being bound by the 1999 Constitution.
Other than the proclaimed disdain for Democracy, there is nothing new in the inheritors present stance. For several years now, they have demonstrated their contempt for the 1999 Constitution. In 2000, contrary to the provisions of the 1999 Constitution, the State Houses of Assembly of the same twelve states enacted Laws converting their States to Sharia Law States and set up Sharia Police, HISBA; the Executive arms of the Sharia Law States executed the verdicts of Sharia Tribunals, including the chopping off of limbs and stonning adulterous women to death. For whatever other reason but certainly including an attempt to ensure that the Police Force enshrined in the 1999 Constitution does not exercise surveilance over their homelands, they have now sought its extinction by continuous and indiscriminate bombing of Police Formations From 2000 to date, not one inheritor voice has been heard in condemnation of these actions. In effect, the inheritors long ago declared the death of Nigeria and are presently continuing in the same vein.
At this juncture, We, the peoples of the Lower Niger, Oodua Land and the Middle Belt, HEREBY DECLARE that we have reached the end of our endurance in this matter and assert that the present state of affairs is totally intolerable and unacceptable to us.
In view of the foregoing, We, the peoples of the Lower Niger, Oodua Land and the Middle Belt, Declare as follows that:
We acknowledge the inalienable right of the inheritors not to want to have anything to do with Democracy whilst asserting our own inalienable right to continue our belief in and desire for Democracy in our own homelands, both in exercise of our mutual Rights as the Indigenous Peoples of our respective Homelands, in accordance with The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 2007, particularly Articles 3, 4 and 5 thereof, applicable in Nigeria.
Provided the peoples of Southern Kaduna and similar borderline communities who are not of their own stock and who do not subscribe to Sharia Law are excluded, we acknowledge the inalienable right of the inheritors that Sharia Law be applicable in their homelands, whilst also asserting our own inalienable right not to have Sharia Law apply to our own homelands, both in exercise of our mutual Rights as the Indigenous Peoples of our respective Homelands, in accordance with The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 2007, particularly Articles 3, 4 and 5 thereof, applicable in Nigeria.
We accept the Declaration inherent in the actions of the inheritors that, except for being co-victims of an inglorious colonial past which brought us together in the first place and equally co-victims of an imposed 1999 Constitution, we, the peoples of The Lower Niger, Oodua Land and the Middle Belt, have nothing in common with the inheritors and are also convinced that the Union remains the mistake of 1914.
At the instance of The Movement for New Nigeria, plaintiffs representing our ethnic nationalities in Suit Nos. FHC/ABJ/CS/367/07 in the Federal High Court, Abuja and No. FHC/L/CS/558/09 before the Federal High Court Lagos Division, sought reliefs including a Declaration that the 1999 Constitution is a Forgery; that the Preamble be set aside and that the Government of the day be ordered to initiate a process for the negotiation and re-enactment of our Union Document (Constitution) via a Sovereign National Coonference (SNC) to which they have turned deaf ears to date. Having therefore been at the receiving end of the injustices it has meted out to us over the past 12 years, we share the views of the inheritors that the 1999 Constitution is incapable of affording justice.
Whereas we were prepared to participate in the Sovereign National Conference advocated recently by NADECO whereat the ethnic nationalities of Nigeria would have settled the Question: ABUJA, ABURI OR ARABA, we assert that the actions of the inheritors have thrown that option into the basket of history and we Hereby accept and adopt the Declaration inherent in the actions of the inheritors, whilst equally Declaring same, that the 1999 Constitution is dead and equally ceases to apply to and in our homelands.
In consequence, we equally Declare that that Nigeria contrapted by our Colonial masters and hitherto sustained by the pretentious and inglorious 1999 Constitution, the only contrived cord binding us together, is at an end and by virtue of the Self Determination Rights conferred by the aforesaid United Nations Declaration, reserve our inalienable right to deal with our homelands as we choose.
By virtue of Declaration 5 herein, we, the owners of the Homelands of the Lower Niger, Oodua Land, and the Middle Belt are HEREBY RESOLVED to henceforth pursue the ratification of our various Draft Constitutions, which may be the basis of a future Union to be still known as Nigeria or by whatever other name we choose.
Post the event of a future Union to be still known as Nigeria or by whatever name we choose, we, the owners of the Homelands of the Lower Niger, Oodua Land and the Middle-Belt, HEREBY PLEDGE to abide by any and all Obligations of an international nature imposed by the now at an end contrapted Nigeria upon our respective Homelands.
For and on behalf of
The Lower Niger Congress:
Kalada M. Jene; Alfred Ilenre; Dr. Idongesit Ambrose; Alex Ayotalumuo
Federation of Oodua People:Tokunbo Ajasin; Shenge Rhaman; Kunle Olaiya; Leye Akinmodiro; Wole Aina; Suleiman A. Salawu
The Middle-Belt Congress: Professor Leonard Shilgba; Andrew Ayuba Butswat; Nath Apir; Bishop Luke Angula
FRED AGBEYEGBE, ESQ.
TONY NNADI, ESQ.
(President) (Secretary-General)
Document 3
MOVEMENT FOR NEW NIGERIA.
COUNTRY-WIDE REJECTION OF THE 1999 CONSTITUTION AS BASIS OF NIGERIA ; OPTIONS AND PROCESSES FOR RECONSTRUCTION: CONFEDERATION OR INDEPENDENT UNITS AMENDMENTS OR SOVEREIGN CONFERENCE.
INTRODUCTION:
As various national groups prepare for the inevitable constitutional
reconstruction of the distressed Nigerian Union, the LOWER NIGER CONGRESS, (a platform by which willing peoples of the Ethnic Nations of the old Eastern Region and the old Mid-Western Region, seek to federate themselves into a cohesive, values-driven, systems-based political bloc, under a new social-contract regime engendering a society of equal opportunities), wishes to restate its position on the vexed question of the basis of Nigeria and the future of its divergent peoples. The goal of this communication is to dissect and illuminate the core issues of the obfuscated debate on that vexed question, with a view to distilling the options available to all parties, thus providing insight into the choice already being made by the peoples of the Lower Niger including the processes by which that choice will be consummated.
A DIAGNOSTIC EXAMINATION OF THE PROBLEM LOOSELY CALLED ‘THE NATIONAL QUESTION’.
Having observed the debate on Constitutional Amendment, National Conference (sovereign or not) and Referendum, it is clear to LNC that most actors and commentators (including regrettably lawyers, some of who are Senior Advocates and Professors, Senators, House Members and Heads of the Executive arm) do not seem to know the meaning of Constitution nor that of Sovereignty; they fail to grasp the nexus between the two and therefore, whose prerogative it is to make or re-make a Constitution; they seem unable to fathom the grave implications of a disputed Constitution such as the case with the so-called ‘1999 Constitution’. There is yet another term known as ‘Suzerainty’ which has been the unseen monster driving the confusion and massive violence that have characterized the debate of the Nigerian Question from inception . It is therefore needful to explain these concepts as a necessary prelude to a meaningful and practical engagement with the subject.
THE MEANING OF ‘A CONSTITUTION’.
In simple terms, to ‘constitute’ means putting or coming together of units to make one whole. In the case of Nigeria, Britain by fiat of the 1914 Amalgamation, put together a mosaic of ethnic blocs which it had subjugated piecemeal and ruled separately as Colony and Protectorates, labeling it ‘Nigeria’. The various supreme legal instruments called ‘Orders in Council’, regulating that experiment at artificial nation building, up to 1960 were the ‘Constitutions’ of that era (Lyttleton, Richards and MacPherson), wholly imposed by London. As independence approached, putting together had to give way to coming together by way of the various Constitutional Conferences in London and Lagos at which Delegations of the then three Regions (Region was the new nomenclature of the erstwhile Protectorates), which had been offered independence separately on certain conditions, explored the option of coming together to federate on their own terms. They had to agree on two key questions: (a) whether to come together as one country, in other words, to federate and (b) on what terms?.
The agreement they reached in answer to those two key questions was documented as the Independence Constitution of Nigeria, 1960, anchored fully on powers donated by the three Regions which already had their respective self-governance Constitutions prior to 1960. The over-riding feature of that agreement was a federating model in which the Regions substantially retained their individual independence (autonomy), owned and controlled their resources, contributing there-from towards the upkeep of the Center, a certain percentage (15%), for the limited functions jointly delegated to the Center by the Regions. Each Region had its own Constitution and developed at own pace, using its own resources. As heavily manipulated by the departing British overlords as it was, this agreement was the basis of independent Nigeria becoming onecountry (one-Nigeria) in 1960, replacing the old basis of British imposition with a new one founded on agreement.
The power by which the British imposed those pre independent Constitutions derived from their suzerainty (the right of country to rule over another country) over Nigeria in the colonial era whereas the power by which the Regional Delegations negotiated the Independence Constitution of 1960 derived from their sovereignty (ultimate political power in a country) which independence, in principle restored. Suzerainty is therefore an adverse power submerging and overwhelming sovereignty. The custodian of the power of suzerainty, per force, beneficially own and control all the assets and resources of the suppressed sovereignty.
When in 1966 the military intervention toppled these Constitutions and replaced them via Decree with an imposed unitary arrangement in which the autonomy of the Regions was abrogated and their powers and assets hijacked by the Central (Federal), the basis of Nigeria was destroyed and the country went into technical dissolution or coma. Lieutenant-Colonel Yakubu Gowon, as Head of the then disputed Nigeria admitted this much in his famous broadcast during the dark hours of Nigeria’s demise in 1966, when he declared that ‘the basis of Nigeria’s unity was no more there’. The last-ditch attempt to revive the dying Nigerian Union by accord in Aburi, Ghana January 1967 was jettisoned by the same Gowon who instead applied ruthless force to drag the break-away Biafra back to the Union in a 3-year genocidal war that claimed about 3.5million lives on the side of the injured peoples Biafra, (the then Eastern Nigeria which form the bulk of today’s Lower Niger).
By resorting to force to subjugate the Republic of Biafra and re-establish one-Nigeria, Gowon’s Government fully assumed the suzerainty vacated by Britain, thereby submerging the sovereignty of the peoples. All Governments of Nigeria to date, since after Gowon, in refusing to restore the agreed basis of Nigeria, were consciously clinging to that power of suzerainty and therefore beneficially owning and controlling the assets and resources of the Sovereign Peoples of Nigeria and subjecting them to internal colonialism where they swim in obscene opulence while the peoples wallow in abject poverty.
This narrative will be incomplete if we do not interrogate the historical dynamics that threw up both the events of 1966 and the resultant Governments that could so completely overwhelm the sovereignty of the peoples just as the British were retreating because those dynamics introduce a horizontal complexity to what ordinarily looks like a vertical question of government suppressing its people. The solution models will of necessity be driven by both. Recently declassified Colonial secret documents show that the departing British colonial authorities, for reasons bordering on economic benefit, had by matrix of manipulations including gerrymandering and rigging, entrenched the Fulani-led Northern hegemony over Nigeria in manner that would permanently keep real power in the hands of the North, resulting in a reality where what was packaged as ‘Independence’ 1960 was merely a transfer of the British suzerainty to their local agents, the Fulani.
Celebrating this great fortune with his lieutenants in the very week of Independence in the October, 1960, the then Northern Premier, Sir Ahmadu Bello declared that: “The new nation called Nigeria should be an estate of our great-grandfather, Uthman Dan Fodio. We must ruthlessly prevent a change of power. We use the minorities of the North as willing tools and the South as a conquered territory and never allow them to rule over us, and never allow them to have control over their future” Parrot Newspaper, 12th Oct. 1960.
First is to note that the aforesaid pre-independence British manipulations, recently alluded to by President Jonathan in Udi at a burial ceremony, were directly responsible for the cataclysmic events that trailed the Independence elections which degenerated into the declaration of a State of Emergency in the Western Region on the 29th of May, 1962, further leading to the trial and imprisonment of Chief Obafemi Awolowo and then to the Wild Wild West that followed the Regional Elections of 1964, culminating in the military coup of January,1966.
Secondly, this 1960 Mission Statement and Battle Script which obviously was in joint-venture with Britain, best explains the mystery of the counter-coup of 1966 and its very bloody aftermath including the ruthless, genocidal war against Biafra and the ignoble role of Britain in that shame-laden chapter of recent human history. That war seems to be still in progress since most of the post-war punitive policies against the East remain firmly in place.
It is in fact self-evident, that the current Constitutional order represents a full implementation of that 1960 Mission Statement. This truth easily presents itself upon a review of the ruthless tactics employed, the main dramatis personae, their Regions of origin and roles assigned each Region in the Script vis-à-vis the new realities created by the fiat of Sardauna’s protégés in the affairs of each Region. Nigeria is now master-servant enclave.
We now proceed to dissect the origin, emergence-process and specific outcomes of the current constitutional order for which reason it is being vehemently resisted and rejected across the country.
WHY WE REJECT THE NIGERIA DEFINED BY THE 1999 CONSTITUTION.
In exercise of the power of suzerainty and to make their gain permanent, our new conquerors, between 1966 and 1999, by a series of Decrees, comprehensively replaced the agreement upon which Nigeria was founded and, building upon the 1979 version, collated same into one volume in 1999 labeled ‘the 1999 Constitution’, which one Abdusalam Abubakar imposed via Decree No. 24 of 1999 with the egregious falsehood in its preamble that ‘we the people’ enacted it. This is fraud. This fraud is the basis of the current Nigeria and its governance. Force has replaced agreement as the basis of Nigeria and has been deployed via Decrees, to effect the following fundamental distortions in the original agreement founding the Nigerian Union –
(i) Our consent to the being and terms of the Nigerian Union was manufactured and emplaced in the preamble that foisted on us, the authorship of the instrument of our enslavement, 1999 Constitution; in other words, our signature was forged to pretend that ‘we the people’ authorized our damnation;
(ii) the benefits and entitlements of the citizens under our social contract which the constitution is, was cancelled by S.6(6)C thereby legally absolving the government of any obligations to the citizens and therefore free the entire treasury for the beneficial use of its custodians in power. The outcome is the mind-boggling wealth of those in power and the heart-rending poverty ravaging over 90% of the populace; by this singular provision, no part of the over US$200M earned by Nigeria daily is meant for the populace as everything goes to service the fabulous lifestyles and greed of those in power and their sponsors; by government’s own admission, 72% of the current budget is earmarked to pay those in power. The rest is shared between corruption and infrastructure;
(iii) Appropriation provisions in Sections 81/82 and 121/122, which effectively hand over the spare keys of the treasury to heads of the executive branch at the center and in the states;(iii) 36 lame federating units styled ‘States’ replaced 4 strong, viable Regions;
(iv) 774 revenue-sucking-outlets styled LGAs replaced the good old service-rendering Local Councils; (v) arising from (iii) (iv) above, a heavily skewed representation and revenue sharing pattern that create a political majority from phantom majority whilst handing out a lion share of revenues to those secured its ownership by constitutional fraud;
(vi) assets, resources and powers of the Federating Units got hijacked and confiscated by a monstrous center to date;
(vii) a 68-item Federal Exclusive List strip the federating units of the most important governmental powers and functions thereby stultifying development and impairing security/order;
(viii) a culture of impunity entrenched by a regime of immunity entrenched by S.6(6)d and S.308; the former retrospectively provides a blanket immunity for all crimes committed by those in power, including murder, genocide and grand looting, from the 15th day of January, 1966 to the 29th of May,1999. The latter shields from inquiry or sanction for any wrong-doing (including looting and murder), the 37 men and women (the President and 36 Governors and their deputies), who exclusively sign out , all monies in Nigeria’s treasury, while they are in office;
(ix) mediocrity replaced of excellence under the guise of federal character cum quota system.
(x) a Land Use Decree by which massive expropriations were enacted against the peoples of Nigeria by their rulers
(xi) oaths of allegiance/office that bind the those in power (the new custodians of suzerainty!), to protect and defend with all their might and ability, the fraud which our Constitution is.
It will be plain stupidity to expect current beneficiaries of this order to repent and amend away their benefits. These are the main constitutional grievances for which the LOWER NIGER CONGRESS rejects the Nigeria defined by the ‘1999 Constitution’ and commits itself to the task of securing a better political future for our people.
LNC posits that this 11-item list of Constitutional grievances (i-xi above), form the core of the questions Nigeria must answer now otherwise the brutally raped peoples of Nigeria will devise their own answers which may include exiting the Union. President Jonathan recently declared electoral fraud as the worst form of corruption. We trust that Mr President would agree with us that the Constitutional fraud outlined herein is more heinous and far more injurious to Nigeria and Nigerians than electoral fraud; Amendments or electoral reforms can neither remove the heavy, impoverishing constitutional shackles placed on the peoples nor diminish the stupendous benefits guaranteed by the same Constitution to office holders which is what really drives the extreme desperation to get into public office. The stakes are now so high that no outcome will be acceptable to all sides in the 2015 electoral round. Massive bloodshed is guaranteed to follow even if Mr President declines to contest because then it would be the turn (or in fact duty) of aggrieved elements of Southern part of Nigeria to make the country ungovernable. Same happens if he contests. Head or tail, blood will flow if another election is allowed under this disputed Constitutional order. It will therefore be grossly irresponsible to plunge recklessly into such future of assured destruction.
For this reason and to halt a further perpetuation of fraud against our peoples as highlighted in our 11-items list of Constitutional grievances, LNC rejects the conduct of any further national elections under the 1999 Constitution, in the Lower Territory, starting with the one scheduled for 2015 as each election reinforces the fraud. Politicians of Lower Niger origin strongly advised be on the side of their people by towing this line. Any deviation will be for purely selfish reasons and will pitch the peoples of Lower Niger against such politicians.
The direct result of the criminal transmogrification of Nigeria from a federal union to a unitary state and the hijack of our sovereignty by an indigenous suzerainty masquerading as government, is the cancerous decay now manifesting by way of total system collapse in all sectors including security, infrastructure, electricity, education, healthcare etc, creating mass poverty, total societal dysfunction and justifying our failed-state rating world-wide.
To the extent that our Constitution is a forgery and a fraud, Nigeria itself has become a fraud and a criminal enterprise where corruption is official. This is a far bigger problem than officials being corrupt. The ‘book’ (our Constitution) to which we should have been bringing corrupt officials, was drawn up by the beneficiaries of grand corruption who authored of all the Decrees made from 1966 to 1999, taking care to create avenues for further corruption and comprehensively protecting both past and potential beneficiaries of corruption. It is the case of the proprietors of a robbery gang, drawing up the rule-book for community security.
As long as the 1999 Constitution is in place even with amendments, corruption remains hale and hearty, ensconced in the impregnable fortress of the Constitution beyond the reach of those who crow daily in indignation while the beneficiaries, in and out of power, laugh in derision, running a circus of probes and trials under the bogus banner of ‘war on corruption’. An elaborate asset-stripping scam code-named privatization typifies the gang’s business.
A further direct consequence of the fraudulence of our Constitution is the ubiquitous regional violent agitations. Without exception, each agitation is a violent rejection of one constitutional imposition or the other. MEND rejects the hijack and confiscation of the oil and gas resources of the Niger-Delta by the Exclusive List which vests the Federal Government with ownership and control the resources. OPC rejects the hijack of power and responsibility for the internal security of Yorubaland by the Exclusive List which puts the all-important matter of security of life and property in Yorubaland exclusively in the hands of stranger elements who may not wish the Yoruba well. Pursuant to the lie in the preamble to the 1999 Constitution that ‘we the peoples of Nigeria have firmly and solemnly resolved to live in unity and harmony as one indivisible and indissoluble sovereign Nation’ MASSOB rejects that lie on behalf of the Igbo and other peoples of Eastern Nigeria who have been kept in Nigeria by naked force since 1967 when they were violently pushed to opt out of a Nigeria that had launched a campaign of genocide against them. BOKO HARAM rejects Nigeria’s unilateral constitutional imposition of democracy, secularity and western legislative, judicial and executive procedures as well as western pattern of learning, on their traditionally sharia territory.
Their various methods may be objectionable, but they are all at one in rejecting the imposed 1999 Constitution for various legitimate reasons. They are rejecting Nigeria as presently defined. The answer cannot lie in isolated dialogues with any of them since the changes they demand cannot be offered by government outside the framework of an all-inclusive constitutional re-negotiation. Those demands transcend issues of law and order.
Having reviewed key concepts and relevant history, the next is to zoom in on the ongoing debate about amendments, with a view to deciphering who between the people and the government (inclusive of the legislative arm) has the right and exclusive prerogative to make or amend the Constitution. Here we find a suitable paradigm guide to understanding the issues will be to juxtapose the ‘Constitution’ as it relates to a Country with ‘Memorandum and Articles of Association’ as it relates to a company. Prospective Promoters/shareholders as owners of the enterprise, first agree to form themselves into a company and they spell out all the terms of their relationship in the would-be enterprise in a document called Memorandum and Articles of Association which they then register or incorporate. They subsequently hire a Management Team (who may also be shareholders) to carry out their wishes strictly as contained in the Memo and Articles. At no time does it become the legitimate business of the hired management team to wholly substitute or alter the contents of the Memo and Articles over the head of the owners, the shareholders.
In the case of a country, the peoples in exercise of their sovereignty, agree to form Country (the enterprise) or political union on certain terms. They spell out this agreement and terms in a Charter document called the ‘Constitution’ which defines the enterprise. They then periodically, hire a management team called ‘Government’, by a process known as ‘election’s, to carry out their wishes, strictly according their Charter Document, the Constitution. At no time does it become the legitimate business of that hired management team called the government (or any of its arms including the Legislature), to wholly substitute or amend the Charter Document, the Constitution over the head of the owners of the enterprise, the people.
Put differently, at no point can the hired Management Team (or the Government), dictate to the body of shareholders (or the sovereign peoples), what the contents of the Memo and Articles (or the Constitution) should be. If the hired management team fraudulently changes the Memo/Articles thereby hijacking the enterprise, then the shareholders must find a way to re-enact or restore their Memo/Article. If prevented, they can dissolve the company and retrieve their individual assets. In the same vein, if the government (and note that government is a continuum), fraudulently changes the Constitution and hijacks the Country as happened between 1966 and 1999, then the peoples must find a way to re-establish their Union (country) by a Sovereign meeting or they dissolve the Union by unilateral exits. The limited powers of amendments usually found in Constitutions is always made subject to a Referendum, giving the people, as principals, the final say on what changes their servants, the government propose. That is the whole argument raging about amendments and the question of referendum. What happened to Nigeria in 1966 was that the Management Team (Government), toppled the Memo and Articles (Constitution) establishing the company (Nigeria). their successors-in-title, the present Government (through the National Assembly) is now telling the owners of Nigeria, the peoples, to shut up and keep quiet.
A dangerous cocktail of ignorance, arrogance and dishonesty now drives the National Assembly to believe that a condescending one-day circus tagged ‘People Public Session’ in 360 locations across Nigeria will make the outcome of their amendment charade, “a Peoples’Constitution”. Let legislators of Lower Niger origin be informed that our peoples feel very insulted and progressively view their participation in the Abuja charade as a betrayal by determined rouges for self-serving purpose, not at all on behalf of their contituents.
OPTIONS FOR RECONSTRUCTION: BETWEEN UNITARISM (ABUJA), FEDERATION (ABURI) AND INDEPENDENT UNITS (ARABA).
From the narrative above, it is clear that Nigeria was founded as a Federation of Autonomous Regions which made great progress in healthy rivalry. It got into the wrong route since 1966 when it drifted progressively into unitarism and over-centralization. This led to a steady decline that has resulted in much bloodshed, anguish, misery and unimaginable mass poverty amidst plenty, serial electoral heist and culminating in an all-sector system failure, prompting centrifugal sentiments/actions in rejection of unitarism by way agitations and militancy, with prospects of a sudden violent disintegration. The answer must lie in moving away completely from unitarism back to federalism if there is still goodwill enough to federate or for the entrapped ethnic nations to exit the failed Union in formations of their choice as already unfolding. These were the two options open to Nigeria since 1966, but which its arrogant operators, bluntly refused to explore until now when the ABURI option appears to have gone off the table. We shall get to that issue shortly.
OPTIONS OF METHODS AND MODALITIES: BETWEEN AMENDMENTS, NATIONAL CONFERENCE AND SOVEREIGN CONFERENCE OF ETHNIC NATIONALITIES.
It is evident that the crux of the Nigerian tragedy today is that we the people neither discussed nor agreed on the being and terms of the current imposed Nigeria since after the 1966 demise of the originally agreed Nigeria. Amendment of the fraudulent instrument is not an option since the minimum requirement is for the federating units to first discuss and agree as sovereignties before documenting their agreement in a federating Constitution. Those in power, especially the legislature, who insist on amendments are provocatively proclaiming themselves as the new sovereign power and therefore daring the peoples to do their worst. AMENDMENT IS NOT AN OPTION.
Those who obdurately cling to the 1999 Constitution as an unquestionable source of governmental authority are actually aiding and abetting a high crime for which individual criminal responsibility may attach, especially in the hands of those they claim to represent in Abuja and various State Houses across the Nigeria. If they did not know before, by this publication, their days of ignorance must come to an end. Even by the admission of the authors of the 1999 Constitution in S.14(2)a, ‘Sovereignty belongs to the people of Nigeria from whom, government, through this Constitution, derives all its powers and authority’. The ‘we the people’ in the preamble refers this universal truism in the jurisprudence of contemporary constitutions.
Proponents of ‘NATIONAL CONFERENCE’ who hold Nigeria sacrosanct and non-negotiable, and who in their imagination, vest the Government with our sovereignty in perpetuity, are telling the rest of us that the current Nigeria of imposition which creates a master-servant relationship (apologies to Lt.Gen Alani Akinrinade), in an internal colonialism setting, must stay while we must all shut up and be content with our slave status.
By refusing to acknowledge the sovereignty of the federating nationalities, such that those nationalities come with same to the table of discussions and agree on terms of federating, they are either ignorant, dishonest or reckless. In this category we find the likes of PROJECT NIGERIA, THE NATIONAL SUMMIT GROUP and a couple of other amorphous groups and individuals including Ibrahim Babangida who earlier this year declared the indivisibility and indissolubility of Nigeria as ‘SETTLED ISSUES’, rudely reminding the rest of us that the terms of Nigeria’s Constitution were settled in the battlefields of Biafra. SUCH A NATIONAL CONFERENCE WILL BE AN EXERCISE IN FUTILITY not too different from Obasanjo’s doomed-from-start National Political Reform Conference of 2005, once it is not premised on the acknowledged sovereignty of the peoples of Nigeria.
OUR POSITION AND OUR CHOICE OF RECONSRUCTION OPTION CUM METHODOLOGY. Going by what we have examined so far, LOWER NIGER CONGRESS posits that only a SOVEREIGN CONFERENCE OF THE ETHNIC NATIONS OF NIGERIA,
premised on the acknowledged sovereignty of each, offer a dim hope of forging any kind of Union out of erstwhile Nigeria. We fear that even that dim hope has been banished by the emergence of A violent demand for Sharia in the 12 contiguous States of the Muslim North where Sharia had been enacted and enforced for 12 years running, since the rest of the Country cannot be forced to embrace Sharia nor can anyone compel the Sharia North to abandon Sharia, their way of life which Nigeria has affected. It is obvious that Nigeria is now headed towards the EMERGENCE OF UNITS INDEPENDENT FEDERATIONS which may in the future work out new protocols of relationship with one another. This option is fully backed by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of indigenous Peoples, 2007, which put a global seal on the right to self-determination. The only choice left to make is whether to allow the process evolve in peace or by violence. Referendum is a tested mechanism to head off violence.
Those who in unfounded paranoia, describe this natural unbundling as ‘break-up’ in a negative sense , should rise above their fears and engage with the process in a manner that would obviate violence. We had 45 years to restore the Union of Nigeria but greed, arrogance and wickedness prevailed. It is now too late. We can only seek to work out good and friendly neighbourliness post-unbundling.
LNC invites leaders self-determination groups, town unions, lawyers, the academia, clergymen and women, NGOs, the Government particularly the National/ State Assembly Members, Labour, students and the media to digest and publicly engage the issues raised herein to confront the forces of darkness holding our collective destinies hostage. You must speak up publicly for or against. Silence here is not golden and will be read by those you lead as siding with an evil system to torment the people. The media must reset the debate agenda, armed with these illuminations. International investors and development partners are also requested to re-appraise their engagements in Nigeria against the background of these facts and perspectives. For a transitional framework and to avoid anarchy in the unfolding drama of Nigeria’s unraveling, LNC strongly recommends that we do exactly what Apartheid South-African Government of Fredrick De Clerk did in 1990 when the Apartheid Constitution of South Africa, imposed by a white minority, was rejected by the black majority in South Africa. That Government suspended further elections under the Apartheid Constitution, initiated an all-inclusive Sovereign Conference (CODESA), which discussed and agreed on a fresh basis for South Africa which then became the new Constitution upon which the election of 1994, won by Mandela’s ANC was conducted. That Government remained in office in a transitional capacity for that period. Nigeria has reached that same bus-stop where a Constitution imposed by a tiny minority is being violently rejected countrywide by the oppressed majority. LNC prescribes a similar transitional arrangement for Nigeria without further delay. Any other approach is likely to end in catastrophe and unprecedented human misery.
LNC salutes the vision and courage of the YORUBA NATIONAL ASSEMBLY and the enlarged Elders Conclave which endorsed its work, for stepping forward to lead the Yoruba Nation at this crucial time and particularly, for rejecting the amendment charade together with the so-called 1999 Constitution as basis of Nigeria; most importantly for directing Yoruba Members of the National Assembly to withdraw further participation in the Amendment circus which it aptly called a journey to nowhere and for declaring that the 2011 elections would be the last the Yoruba would tolerate on its soil under the fraudulent 1999 Constitution (Guardian, Wed. 28/11/12 ).
LNC equally salutes ALADINMA, of our Igbo arm, for earlier disclaiming the same 1999 Constitution and rejecting further elections under it in Igboland (Sun June 21, 2012). Same for the United Middle-Belt Youth Congress which had declared same in the Middle-Belt. NO DEMOCRACY CAN BE BUILT ON A MASTER-SERVANT CONSTITUTION.
LNC also salute the masses of Lower Niger who in large numbers have trooped out in several cities, towns and villages in support of the Victory Marches of thanksgiving to God for preserving us in our space, more 45 years after ferocious forces of genocide came against us from land, air and sea. As the Victory March train get to other locations and as we continue to enlighten our peoples for a Referendum in the Lower Niger on the subject of this communication to ascertain the true wishes of our peoples, we invite Volunteers who wish to help co-ordinate the process in their areas to sign up for training in the nearest LNC office or do so on-line via the website,www.lowernigercongress.com, or http://www.aladinma.org. or call the numbers shown above. Also view the YouTube title ‘WHO OWNS PAPA’S LAND?’ for a deeper insight into the issues under scrutiny.
For an objective evaluation of Achebe’s assertions in his recent book on Biafra, see the 800-page Compendium of raw clips from Foreign War Correspondents and other foreign eye witnesses including Red Cross, Caritas, World Council of Churches, etc, who reported the war from the front-lines real-time 1967-1970, in a new book titled ‘THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE NIGERIAN-BIAFRA WAR’. Copies of this sobering holocaust account are available in all LNC offices throughout the Country. Evidence facts informing the LNC intervention are in that compendium.
Finally, guided by the post-war events of 1970-1974 relating to asset forfeiture and seizure, LNC requests persons of Lower Niger (Former Eastern Nigeria and parts of former Mid-West) origin who own immovable property outside the Lower Niger Territory to take an inventory of such assets with valuation, in readiness for a registration of same in the LOWER NIGER ASSET PROTECTION AND GUARANTEE SCHEME designed to avoid or at the least minimize such losses (at least in value) which may arise from any changes in the polity. Further information on the modalities for inventory/registration will be made available by advertorials in national dailies in the near future.
Long live the Peoples of the Lower Niger. Long live all lovers of justice and equity in Nigeria. Dated this 30th day of November, 2012.
SIGNED for National Delegations of the prospective Federating Nations of the Lower Niger Dr Amrose, (Anang), Tony Nyiam (Ogoja), Ann-Kio Briggs (Ijaw), Alfred Ilenre (Edo), Maazi Chijioke Asogwa (Igbo),
TONY NNADI ESQ. (SECRETARY-GENERAL)
FRED AGBEYEGBE ESQ. (PRESIDENT)
Document 4
RESOLUTIONS OF THE SOLEMN ASSEMBLY OF THE PEOPLES OF THE LOWER NIGER HELD MONDAY 27TH APRIL 2015
At a Solemn Assembly of the Peoples of the Lower Niger (hereinafter called the Assembly) convened by the Lower Niger Congress (hereinafter called the Congress) on 27th April, 2015 at the Atlantic Hall of Hotel Presidential, Port Harcourt, the Delegates, observed and deliberated as follows:
That Nigeria at inception in 1914 was purely a commercial venture of the British Crown which paid the Royal Niger Company the sum £865,000 in 1900 to acquire proprietary rights over the vast territory it later christened Nigeria. It was not a Union of willing Allies.
That the lopsided Constitutional arrangements, emplaced by the Colonial Authorities of the time simply created a Master-Servant Union in which Southern Nigeria including the Lower Niger was constitutionally subjugated to the then Northern Nigeria.
That the imbalances orchestrated by that structure left behind by Britain in 1960, quickly imploded between 1961 and 1966 resulting in two bloody Coups Detat and xenophobic massacre of more than a hundred thousand peoples of the Lower Niger (then Eastern Nigeria), living in the North of Nigeria, further deteriorating to the collapse of the Nigerian Union and its Federal Constitution.
That the attempt to restore the failed Nigeria Union via a Conference of the then Military Leaders in Aburi Ghana was frustrated when upon return to Nigeria the Government of the rest of Nigeria led by Yakubu Gowon abandoned the agreement reached in Aburi and chose instead to wage a genocidal war which consumed more than 3 Million lives of the People of the Lower Niger between 1967 and 1970.
Subsequent attempts to return to discussions that will bring everybody back to the Union on equitable terms had been rebuffed and blocked by the alliance led by the Born to rule of the conservative North and supported by the renegade wing of the South-West, the latest being the 2014 National Conference where they (North/South-West alliance) declared that the terms of the Nigeria Union (and therefore the enslavement of the Lower Niger) was not negotiable.
On the point of blocking dialogue, it will be recalled that President Goodluck Jonathan, while inaugurating the Presidential Advisory Committee on the 2014 National Conference, expressly stated that “the Conference is aimed at realistically examining and genuinely resolving, long standing impediments to our cohesion and development, as a truly United Country. The North/South-West Alliance at the Conference riled against this clear position of the President by procuring the first decision of the Conference that the terms of our Unity was not up for discussion.
That the current Constitution imposed by Decrees made exclusively by officers from the rest of Nigeria between 1966-1999 enslave the Peoples of the Lower Niger, severely constricts our development as a society and exposes us to routine mass slaughter under the guise of religion and politics.
Specific provisions in the imposed 1999 Constitution which injure and enslave the Lower Niger, for which reason we reject the document as the basis of our Union include;
(a) The claim in the preamble that we the people solemnly resolved to submit our Peoples and our lands into the Union of Nigeria and therefore made and enacted that Constitution. This claim is patently false and therefore renders Nigerias sole title document (the Constitution) a forgery and a fraud against the Lower Niger. Until this is fully addressed, Nigeria and its licencees in our Territory hold our assets with forged instrument.
(b) The 36 States and 774 Local Government structure imposed via decrees by officers from the rest of Nigeria render the Lower Niger an insignificant minority both in the places of decision making (the National Assembly – NASS) and in terms of sharing revenues and other benefits.
(c) The 68 item Federal Exclusive List which confiscates both our assets and our rights to deploy those assets towards our developmental needs. Chief amongst these Constitutional deprivations includes the right to generate, transmit and distribute electricity from our huge endowments, in coal, oil, gas and hydro resources. Same goes for our right to secure our spaces by way of policing, ports, railways, highways and other infrastructure. The North/ South-West titrates our development from the centre.
(d) The so-called Federal Character and its concomitant Quota System that has imposed mediocrity as the standard of Nigeria to which the Lower Niger must fit itself. The damage to the Lower Niger from this is unquantifiable.
(e) The several mentions of Sharia in the Constitution in the face of Section 10 of the same document that prohibits adoption of State religion, has left a leeway for several States in the far North to impose Sharia, which in turn activated an enforcement army called Boko Haram, which owes it an obligation to their faith to kill the infidel, a category to which the Peoples of the Lower Niger fall, in their warped estimation. To now be face to face with the spectre of having as President in the name of one Nigeria, a known sympathizer of the Sharia whose role in the 1966-1970 xenophobic and genocidal campaigns against the Peoples of the Lower Niger remain starkly unaddressed, presents a grave concern to the peoples of the Territory.
In view of viii (a-e) above, those who sit in Lagos, Abuja, London and Washington to hail what is going on in Nigeria as democracy, will do well to remember that in the apartheid era South Africa, elections were held every 5 years in what Margret Thatcher and her co-travellers hailed as “democracy” but which Nelson Mandela, Oliver Thambo and the blacks of South Africa rued as internal colonialism. Like the Blacks of South Africa of the Apartheid era, we in the Lower Niger feel the pangs of internal colonialism thrust upon us by erstwhile compatriots in Nigeria.
The men of God, the Lawyers and the so-called Civil Society Activists who go about pontificating on democracy, free and fair elections and such jaded hogwash, whilst closing their eyes to this weighty question of internal colonialism are either ignorant or dishonest. The Lower Niger Congress challenges them to speak up on these issues as silence mean connivance with our tormentors. The youths whose future is at stake here should invest a fraction of the time they spend on Man U and Arsenal to join this debate and action.
Those who gather in Abuja every month to share proceeds from the oil and gas confiscated in the name of a war that ended in 1970 should ponder over their role in this continuing criminality.
That the geo-political realities presented in the electoral map of the 2015 contest is one in which the rest of the country ganged up in conspiratorial alliance against the Lower Niger, constitutes a clear REFERENDUM on the notorious National Question regarding our mutual co-existence as one Political Union (One Nigeria).
Upon presentations made to the Solemn Assembly by the Lower Niger Congress, the Solemn Assembly resolved that having been openly rejected by the rest of Nigeria and in view of our Right to Self Determination as enunciated in the United Nations Declaration and the Right of Indigenous Peoples 2007 Article 3,4,5, to take steps in exercise of that Right by seeking a future outside the Union of attrition called Nigeria via a Non-violent process driven by Consensus of the Peoples of the Territory verified through a Referendum. The Assembly adopted the 1885 map of the Lower Niger as the geographical basis of our proposed Federation.
ACCORDINGLY, the following steps were Mandated by the Solemn Assembly
The distillation of a Charter of Relationship by the Ethnic Nations of the Lower Niger according to the aforesaid 1885 map which may become the basis of the Federating Constitution of the proposed Lower Niger Federation.
A Referendum of the Peoples of the Lower Niger on the Question of Self-Determination to be preceded by extensive consultations with the populace mainly through Town Hall Meetings as well as consultations with international Stake-Holders via direct representations.
To avoid a repeat of the wicked expropriation of Assets enacted against the People of Lower Niger in 1970 via the Abandoned Property Decree, AN ASSETS PROTECTION AND GUARANTEE SCHEME (APGS) to secure, at least in value, the Assets of the Peoples of the Lower Niger situated outside the Lower Niger Territory within Nigeria.
A recall home for consultations of all persons of the Lower Niger elected or appointed, present or prospective, or in any other way connected with the management of Nigeria under the current Constitution with a view to determining the propriety or otherwise further participation, in the affairs of the Union (formal announcements specifying dates and venues for such consultations shall be made in due course).
A Standing All-purpose Committee of the Solemn Assembly to be constituted to oversee the processes herein outlined and to deal with discussions involving all Persons and Institutions in furtherance to these Mandates of the Solemn Assembly.
AS WE PREPARE FOR THIS ALL IMPORTANT REFERENDUM ON SELF DETERMINATION. LET IT BE KNOWN TO THE WHOLE WORLD THAT THE UNION OF NIGERIA IS NOW A DISPUTED PROJECT AND UNTIL THE DISPUTES ARE FULLY RESOLVED, ALL INTERNATIONAL STAKEHOLDERS ARE HEREBY PUT ON NOTICE AND ADVISED TO TAKE THESE REALITIES INTO ACCOUNT IN THEIR DEALINGS
SIGNED: for and on behalf of the SOLEMN ASSEMBLY:
IKEMBA (COL.) JOE ACHUZIA (RTD)
CHAIRMAN OF THE SOLEMN ASSEMBLY
Signed for and on behalf of the Conveners
FRED AGBEYEGBE ESQ OGORIBA, TIMI KAISER-WILHELM TONY NNADI
PRESIDENT LOWER NIGER CONGRESS CO-CONVENER SECRETARY GENERAL
LOWER NIGER CONGRESS
Document 5
SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT
R E F E R E N D U M
COMMENCEMENT OF REGISTRATION OF 3 MILLION VOLUNTEERS IN PREPARATION FOR THE FORTHCOMING REFERENDUM IN THE LOWER NIGER TERRITORY.
WHEREAS:
(a) By RESOLUTION 2, of the SOLEMN ASSEMBLY OF THE PEOPLES OF THE LOWER NIGER IN PORT HARCOURT, 27TH APRIL, 2015, Convened by the Lower Niger Congress, Accredited Delegates Representing the Ethnic Nationalities of the Lower Niger (being the combined Contiguity of the Old Eastern Region and Midwestern Region of Nigeria), Unanimously Decided that the political future of the Peoples of the Lower Niger in the failed, fractured, imposed Federation of Nigeria shall go to a Referendum of the Peoples of the Territory.
(b) That SOLEMN ASSEMBLY had Adopted an 1885 Map of the Lower Niger Territory, (which depicts the
Geo-Ethnolinguistic diversity of the Territory), as the Geographical basis of a the Prospective Lower Niger Federation, in the inevitable reconfiguration of the distressed Nigeria Union, 100 years after its Amalgamation in 1914, and 50 years after the 1966 collapse of the 5 Constitutions defining the Federation.
(c) The Solemn Assembly Mandated the distillation of a Charter of Relationships that would document the agreements, understandings and consensus amongst the constituent component Nationalities to underpin and define the Federating Constitution for the Territory.
The First Draft of that Charter of Relationships is currently undergoing expert scrutiny and will in the coming days be subjected to a fuller public scrutiny in the Territory of each component Nationality, after which a Joint Inter-Ethnic Review will take place before a Special Delegates Convention to Ratify and Adopt the Charter.
(d) Guided by the Abandoned Property expropriation catastrophe of 1970 and the recent echoes of same, both in the Abuja 2014 National Conference by the Lamido Adamawa, and in Lagos by the Oba of Lagos, in the heat of the 2015 Electoral Round, the Solemn Assembly Mandated an ASSET PROTECTION AND GUARANTEE SCHEME (APGS),to avoid any loss of assets to persons of the Lower Niger Territory, for assets situate outside the Lower Niger.
That Scheme is in place now and will be launched at the Scheduled time for Inventory, Valuation and Documentation.
(e) The Solemn Assembly Mandated the recall home for consultations, of all persons of the Lower Niger, appointed, elected or in anyway, connected with the management of Nigeria, under the Current disputed Constitution 1999 as amended, with a view to determining the propriety or otherwise, of further participation in the affairs of the Union.
(Formal announcements specifying the dates and venues for the Consultations shall be made in due course).
(f) The Solemn Assembly had recounted the story of the 1914 unilateral British annexation of Southern Nigeria to the North in an exercise tagged “Amalgamation”, which is too well known to bear any repetition here. It also recounted the story of the collapsed Federal foundations of Nigeria; the bloody War that was fought 1967-1970 against the Breakaway Eastern Region which Declared itself Biafra and all the institutional atrocities post-War, including the imposition of a Constitutional Architecture that expropriate, shackle and enslave the Eastern Half of Southern Nigeria, wrought by the Victorious Alliance of the rest of Nigeria against the East in that War.
(g) It is pertinent to note that the Countrywide demand for Restructuring which is being ignored by the Government of the day; the ubiquitous Military Operations going on in almost all of Nigeria; the several Self-Determination Agitations raging on all over Nigeria, some violent, are all evidence of a Federation that has collapsed and in need of a Grand Renegotiation.
(h) It is beyond disputation, that the current Constitution of Nigeria was enacted and imposed in utter negation of the Peoples’ already suppressed Sovereignty cum Right to Self-Determination even as expressely prescribed by Section14(2)(a) of the so-called 1999 Constitution, yet the egregious falsehood of “We the People”, proclaimed in the Preamble to that 1999 Constitution foists the authorship of the Document on the entrapped Nationalities. This is a plain fraud and renders the entire 1999 Constitution illegitimate, being a forgery. The entire Structure/Governance founded upon the Constitution 1999 are therefore criminal, to the extent of that false claim.
(i) That by virtue of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 2007, and in remediation of the aforementioned Constitutional imposition, the Ethnic Nationalities of Nigeria, particularly in the Lower Niger Territory, being indigenous Peoples of the Territory now fraudulently subsumed by a Suzerainty called “Nigeria”, have the Right Self-determination and have thus organized themselves to exercise that Right by way of a Referendum.
(j) The Full Text of the Resolutions of the Solemn Assembly of the Peoples of the Peoples of the Lower Niger, as well as the Public Announcement of that Solemn Assembly, were published unedited as full paid Advertorials in several National Dailies. The Guardian Newspaper of April 26, 2015 has the Announcement in a full page. Thisday Newspaper of May 7, 2015 has the Full Text of the Resolutions.
The NOTICE BOARD of the LNC website
http://www.lnc-usa.org has the Major Public Communications of the LNC including the Resolutions of the Solemn Assembly. The Video of that Solemn Assembly is on YouTube by the name, Solemn Assembly of the Peoples of the Lower Niger
(k) Let it be recalled that by the Joint Declaration of June 30th, 2011, the LNC and its MNN Partners had repudiated the fraudulent 1999 Constitution, as the basis of the Nigerian Federation and had outlined the processes and formations by which the Nationalities entrapped therein would reconstruct their political future within their Rights to Self-determine.
NOW THEREFORE,
The Lower Niger Congress posits that:
(1) Sequel to the recent attainment of Key Milestones in the Self-Determination Referendum being processed for the Lower Niger Territory and upon the Advise of LNC Consultants/Project Advisors, the Lower Niger Congress is pleased to announce the Commencement of the Registration of 3 Million Volunteers, to be Processed, Trained and Prepared for Deployment towards various Referendum Tasks including:
(i) Mass Education, Mass Enlightenment and Mobilization of Human and Material Resources.
(ii) Voter Registration, Polling Duties including Collation and Archiving.
(iii) Observers’ Guide and Assistance
(iv) Field Logistics Management including Storage, Transportation, Distribution
(v) Technical Support including for Field Surveys; Delineation of Polling Districts, Areas and Units; Enumeration; Systems and Process Integrity.
(vi) Safety Management, Medical Aid and Emergency Management.
(vii) Campaign Management.
(viii) Materials Management.
(ix) International Coordination, covering Diaspora Participation.
(x) Inter-Institutional Coordination
(xi) Post-Vote Transitioning Management.
(xii) General Assistance.
(2) This Lower Niger Referendum Volunteers Registration does not require any Registration Fees or Payment of any kind and shall on a first-come-first-served basis, be open only to persons aged Sixteen years and above (16+), indigenous to the Lower Niger Territory and belonging to any of the Ethnic Nationalities in the Eleven States of the Lower Niger namely, Abia, Akwa-Ibom, Anambra, Bayelsa, Cross-River, Delta, Ebonyi, Edo, Enugu, Imo and Rivers, who may wish to participate in the humongous Tasks expected to accompany the Referendum in which we estimate well over 50 Million Voters.
(3) To ease the sorting that would follow the Registration, Volunteers are advised to indicate the Task Area(s), as itemized
(i)-(xii) above, which they would prefer to be grouped and assigned into, particularly if such persons have some specialty in the subject area. This will apply more to Professionals and Experts in various Technical Areas as listed above. Each Volunteer can therefore select more than one item.
(4) The Registration Portal for this Referendum Volunteering was opened after weeks of Test Running, at 00:00 Hrs, January 1st, 2017 and it shall remain open on a 24-hour basis until the 3 Million Volunteers are received, verified and fully documented.
The LNC Secretariat will revert to each verified Volunteer with further instructions relating to that Volunteer.
The Lower Niger Congress website http://www.lnc-usa.org will have information and updates on the Referendum process.
This Volunteers Registration is different from the Voter Registration for the Referendum which shall be undertaken at the scheduled time.
Issued this 1st Day of January, 2017.
Signed:
Tony Nnadi.
Secretary-General,
Lower Niger Congress
Document 6
HERE BELOW ARE THE TWO MAPS REFERENCED IN THE DOCUMENTS. THE FIRST IS THE MNN BROKEN MAP OF NIGERIA WHICH EMANATED FROM THE JUNE 30, 2011 LAGOS DECLARATION.
THE SECOND ONE IS THE 1885 MAP OF THE LOWER NIGER, ADOPTED BY THE PORT HARCOURT SOLEMN ASSEMBLY AS THE BASIS OF THE PROSPECTIVE LOWER NIGER FEDERATION.
(GREATER BIAFRA IF YOU LIKE):
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