A non-governmental organisation under the auspices of “Rivers Ijaw Initiative” has decried the injustices and marginalisation of the Ogoni people for the past 51 years.
The group said it was gross inhuman and political strangulation that the Ogoni ethnic nationality as the second largest ethnic nationality in Rivers State was being deprived of the opportunity to govern Rivers State as governor, deputy governor, chief judge or even as speaker of the state House of Assembly despite its numerous contributions to national and regional development.
In a communiqué read by Engineer Eneye Jack during a press briefing at the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Ernest Ikoli Press Centre, Port Harcourt, last Monday, the group said it was poised to confront the socio-economic and political injustices meted against the Ogoni ethnic nationality as we march into another electoral year in 2019.
The communiqué stated that at the inception of constitutional democracy of this dispensation, political power sharing model was unanimously designed and convincingly adopted by the critical political stakeholders from all sections or ethnic nationalities on the basis of three senatorial districts to encourage equal representative opportunity as regards the governorship of Rivers State.
The group appealed to Rivers State stakeholders to reconsider the disadvantage position of the Ogoni people in Rivers political equation, adding that we must in all honesty ensure that any political matrix that would further short change the Rivers South-East in the 2019 General Election should not be encouraged.
The resolutions contained in the communiqué and signed by 18 members of the initiative said that: “The Ijaws in Rivers State through the Rivers Ijaw Initiative, will without reservation, mobilise all available resources (both capital and human) to support the Ogoni ethnic nationality to produce the Governor of Rivers State in 2019”.
Susan Serekara-Nwikhana
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