By: Felix Ikpotor
As the 2023 elections take centre stage, a group under the auspices of Ogoni Democracy and Development Forum (ODDF) are now calling on the political class and parties to address the issue of political injustice against them in Rivers State by allowing Ogonis to fly the governorship flags of their parties.
Convener of the group and former president of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), Legborsi Pyagbara who addressed newsmen in Port Harcourt also rubbished the upland and riverine dichotomy being propagated by some politicians and political parties as a yardstick for deciding who governs the state in 2023.
He said the demand for an Ogoni governor was inline to address the fifty five years of ethnic injustice meted out on the Ogoni people, stressing that among the three ethnic blocs that presently constitute Rivers State, only the Ogonis were yet to produce any head of the three institutions of government.
“It’s saddening to note that fifty five years after the creation of Rivers State and twenty eight years after the launch of the Ogoni Bill of Rights ( OBR), Ogoni continue to be systematically marginalised in the political affairs of Rivers State and indeed Nigeria. Despite its size and highly educated population, no Ogoni son or daughter has been elected to serve as Governor, Deputy Governor, Chief Judge or Speaker of the State House of Assembly. This same situation applies even to the military era,” Pyagbara said.
Continuing Pyagbara said, ” It is on the strength of the above that we are persuaded to appeal to leadership of the political parties at the state and national levels and to call the attention of all well-meaning Nigerians to the anomaly regarding the situation of the Ogoni people”.
On the riverine/ upland dichotomy, Pyagbara who went down memory lane to explain how governors, deputy governor’s, speakers and chief judges have emerged in the state said upland and riverine dichotomy has never been used to determine political leadership.
“We hasten to add that it may have been a political tool introduced in the 70s to attempt to promote political accommodation during the leadership of Alfred Diete-Spiff when some people alleged marginalisation shortly after Rivers State was created,” but stressed that “the creation of Bayelsa State out of Rivers State in 1996 has altered any argument along those lines because neither upland nor riverine is presently homogeneous to the extent that it conduces to ethnic injustice which is the cry of the Ogoni people.”
He also noted that in 2007, the major political parties in the state fielded several Ikwerre sons because of the deliberate decision by the political class to cede power to the ethnic group, stressing that same thing be done to the Ogoni ethnic nationality.
The group said it is in recognition of the above facts that they wish to “appeal to all people of good conscience and believers in justice to use their goodwill to facilitate justice for the Ogoni people and passionately appeal that for 2023, a Rivers Governor of Ogoni extraction be put in place”.
