Nigeria INEC-Ogoniland Alert Warning, 2023 General Elections
“For the safety of LIFE and PROPERTY, the Ogoni Central Indigenous Authority, OCIA on behalf of the people of Ogoni, strongly alerts the Independent Nigeria Electoral Commission, INEC not to deploy electoral personnel and electoral materials; also, not to deploy NYSCmembers; or people in uniforms or plain outfits bearing arms to Ogoniland for purposes of elections in 2023. Take note that the people of Ogoni have resolved to suspend participation in the 2023, and future Nigeria’s elections”.
The President of the Ogoni Central Indigenous Authority, OCIA, Dr. Goodluck Diigbo has sent an urgent alert to the Independent Nigeria Electoral Commission, INEC “to take note”, “stay out”, and “keep off” Ogoniland as political violence continues to erupt foreshadowing Nigeria’s 2023 General Elections.
The alert warning dated 1st February 2023 is addressed to the Chairman of the Independent Nigeria Electoral Commission, INEC, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, reminding him of fears of more dangers even as 300 Ogoni people remain missing from Nigeria’s previous elections.
Sentiments continue to grow and spread among the Ogoni villagers in an affectional attitude of “whatever affects me affects you”; as emotion and tension take control overOgoniland in Rivers State.
On January 30, 2023, OCIA President Diigbo had declared an emergency “Electoral Pause”; an instrument to suspend participation by the people of Ogoni in Nigeria’s 2023 and future elections.
On the same day, members of the families of missing people met with the President of the Ogoni Central Indigenous Authority and attended a media briefing at Teyork, near Bori,the Ogoni capital.
While the Ogoni Central Indigenous Authority invokes its 2015 individual and collective self-defence law; a human rights activist, Hon. Beabubari Gospel Ndorbu, says, “you can appreciate the individual grief as well as the actual collective public and private loss that the missing of 300 people: boys and girls, men and women continues to pour into the Ogoni atmosphere”.
Ogoni is the same indigenous homeland, which the United Nations Environmental Programme, UNEP assessment environmental study says is “the worst petroleum pollution in human history”, and that “it will take more than 30 years to clean up”.
He said that the Nigerian government and the big oil companies are yet to figure out how to remedy the polluted homeland.
The Nigerian army, police, and Ogoni politicians and their allies whom OCIA President Diigbo fingers as complicit in the missing people cases are yet to address what allegedly amount to crimes against humanity and violations of international human rights law.
Lebia, an Ogoni student spoke to reporters as she vowed never to vote again in Nigeria. “I survived, but lost my best girlfriend after she was gang-raped by the military invaders and shot;” she said.
“They broke my heart. We are such close friends. And they didn’t even let me see her corpse”; says the student who lost her best friend.”
And now Diigbo declares that justice will mean that the Independent Nigeria Electoral Commission, INEC and all other parties involved will have to address the case of 300 missing Ogoni people within the framework of International Human Rights Law and Crimes Against Humanity to provide justice for the loss, and the aggrieved.
Read the full Urgent Alert to INEC Boss Prof. Mahmood Yakubu attached below.
Tambari Deekor
OGECO
