Confab Delegates: VPIR labels selection criteria mass scale of rigging

A Warri based group, Volunteers for the Protection of Itsekiri Rights, VPIR has labeled the selection criteria for the 483 confab delegates as mass scale of rigging skewed to favour Ijaws and tasked other ethnic groups in Nigeria to peruse the published delegates to “determine how much each has been cheated”.

In a press statement made available to Fresh Angle, VPIR wondered why Itsekiri ethnic nationality which “accounts for the highest proportion” of oil production in Delta State will be excluded from participating in the Confab which has “over 20 delegates of Ijaw ethnic extraction”.

It also sought to know “why is it that the only time in the history of delegate conferences when the Itsekiris have been excluded happens to be when a Niger-Deltan became President of the country and an Itsekiri man who happens to be detribalized became Governor of Delta State?”.

According to VPIR, “even if it concedes that nine more names are being awaited and one Itsekiri is among the nine, do the Itsekiri have to agitate, shout and cry out in pains before her dues are paid?”

The group also posited that should the selection criteria for delegates be based on ethnic lines, “the Presidency would not have been able to guarantee that Ijaws have the well over 20 slots which they now have, while the Itsekiris have none, Isokos and Urhobos have only about 3 jointly”.

VPIR’s statement which was signed by its National Coordinator, Robinson Ariyo, Esq., National Secretary, Mr. Leleji Augustine and National PRO, Comrade Okpeyeghan Toju noted that Itsekiri nation cannot continue to claim to be part of a country in which the discussion of the sharing formula for the resources on her land would hold without the guarantee of even a seat for her at the table.

×