AN OPEN LETTER TO NIGER DELTANS
RE: THE NEED TO UNITE WITH THE EAST
Good morning, fellow Niger Deltans, great people of inestimable valour and vision. I come to you as a brother, a son, a comrade, and a servant-leader. I am Russell Idatoru Bluejack, a native of Bonny and Nkoro, both Ijaw littoral towns in Rivers State. I am a proud Ijaw son by tribe, but my nationality, I dare say, is BIAFRA. I am a Biafran because nationality is by choice. I was born a Nigerian, like most of us, but the consciousness I have in me agrees with the nationality of my brothers and sisters in the East.
Fellow regional and would-be national compatriots, I come to you with a broken heart, cap in hand to talk to you about something very important to us as a people. I am writing you in respect of the welfare of our children and their own children. My appeal is that we pull down whatever walls that divide the Niger Delta and the East and forge ahead together as one people bound by love, solidarity, and understanding. This appeal is driven by the ominous cloud that awaits us should our eastern brothers go alone, leaving us – Orashi, Ikwerre, Ogoni, Ijaw, Urhobo, Itsekiri, Efik, Ibibio, Annioma in Rivers, Akwa/Cross, Bayelsa, Delta states – as potential preys for sustained religio-economic and political PARASITISM. My dear brothers and sisters, what awaits us will be worse than the 1945 and 1966 pogrom.
Beloved, I know some of our people here feel our eastern relatives hurt us in the past and as such committed unforgivable sin. Well, we are mortals, and we must note that a very significant attribute of our mortality is IMPERFECTION. As humans, we become truly so when we err or falter. We become the spark of divinity when we forgive those that transgressed against us. You can see that I have dropped my philosophical disposition by assuming our Igbo brothers actually committed the alleged crime in the past. I believe we can forgive them and move on. In any case, have we not already forgiven them, since we intermarry, cohabit, do business together etc? All around our major South-South states are our eastern brothers and sisters. We, on our own part, freely visit Imo, Abia, Enugu, Ebonyi and Anambra. Are we not friendlier than those we call friends because of politics? I see no concrete barrier between Niger Delta and the East.
Beloved Niger Deltans, my own people, maybe we have failed to look at our brothers and sisters in the East from a crucial angle – our economy. The economy of South-South is the worst in Nigeria! Are you shocked by that fact? We have no indigenous company, our billionaires in the past are not millionaires, our employment quota system has dropped, and the natural resources in our backyards are not within our reach.
The South-East is home to the most luxuriant indigenous industries, which makes it the economic soul of Nigeria, yet it remains one of the worst economies in Nigeria. A jaunt to Aba will make tears course down your cheek. I was in Umuahia the other day. I noticed that a lot of industries had become insolvent and moribund. What about the environment? Sometimes I find it hard to believe that people live in these squalid environments in the two regions – South-East and South-South. So much for the money Nigeria makes from us!
Beloved Niger Deltans, our sister regions are the real mainstay of Nigeria. The monolithic nature of Nigeria’s economy is sustained by the oil from Rivers, Delta, Cross Rivers, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Abia, Edo, Ondo, and Imo states without recompense. These mammary glands from which oil is sucked by the
