Lower Niger Bloc politicians should answer for helping to transfer their people’s wealth to Arewa

It is just scandalous that the Lower Niger Bloc, where my heritage lies, that is, South-South and South-East together, already the most marginalized and most maltreated region in Nigeria, is still being targeted for further economic ruin for its peoples.

The level of daylight robbery that is happening in this Bloc by using the illegitimate and imposed 1999 Constitution is mind-blowing.

It is that Constitution which none of the indigenous peoples of the Lower Niger Bloc made or agreed, that is used by Central Government to steal the crude oil resources of their oil producing areas. Then now it is their gas that will be seized.

My heart sank as I read from an October 2020 article that, “Five South-Eastern states of Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo will be key actors in its [Central Government] push to enthrone gas as a preferred fuel source for Nigeria’s industrialisation….”.

I learned that dry gas from this Bloc’s rich gas fields i.e. from Igbo land and Niger Delta would be taken away to the Northern region via the Ajaokuta-Abuja-Kaduna-Kano (AKK) gas pipeline project.

This can only be called a wealth transfer from the Lower Niger Bloc to northern Arewa Bloc, empowered by the 1999 Constitution. No! It is actually a HEIST using the 1999 Constitution as a weapon!

The obvious question is: Why are politicians from the Lower Niger Bloc allowing their own people to be robbed of the natural resources in their land using the counterfeit 1999 Constitution?

These natural resources are what the ethnic nations of the Bloc are supposed to use to bring development and infrastructure to their areas, and prosperity to their people.

Instead, our frustrated and frightened young people are forced to go abroad any way they can, to find a country that will take them in and provide for them what they would have been able to have in their own ancestral lands if not for that 1999 Constitution.

Politicians swear an oath of office to uphold the imposed and illegitimate 1999 Constitution that they know holds down their own people, through the 68-item Exclusive List, then also Chapter 2 that promises social welfare, which is then craftily made non-justiciable (not enforceable) by Section 6 (6c).

Politicians in the Lower Niger Bloc really should be made to face their people and explain themselves. Like any adult, they are responsible for their actions, and they are the ones who freely put themselves up for election, promising their people “dividends of democracy”.

Now Lower Niger Bloc politicians should be ready to give an account why they have been favouring the 1999 Constitution that is their people’s enemy.

The peoples of the Lower Niger Bloc also have a responsibility in this unjust situation. Both the older ones and the young people have the responsibility TO REJECT WHATEVER IS BAD FOR THEM!

So, I say to my people of the Lower Niger Bloc, would you accept to drink known poison if your enemy hands it to you? Then why, oh why, are you accepting that your own politicians bring suffering and even anguish upon you through the 1999 Constitution that is not only illegitimate, but you know ruins your present and your future?

Understand that it is the political parties in our Bloc that ensure the renewal of the life of that Constitution each time they go to elections.

So our peoples have the responsibility to get political parties in the Lower Niger Bloc to CLOSE SHOP even temporarily, and not begin any journey to general elections in 2023 under the 1999 Constitution.

For that, the Constitution must by all means first be decommissioned! That is done through the ORDERLY PROCESS of Constitutional Force Majeure (“Confom” for short) declared by NINAS, the alliance of indigenous peoples of the Lower Niger Bloc, Oodua Bloc and Middle-Belt Bloc.

The Confom calls for political parties to CLOSE SHOP so that through dialogue and negotiations, the ethnic nations of the Lower Niger Bloc can, by using democratic processes, decide upon new constitutional arrangements.

South Africa used a similar method to successfully decommission their Apartheid Constitution. The Lower Niger Congress (LNC), the self-determination organisation for the Bloc is our guide in our journey to emancipation.

LNC is the originator and custodian of the strategy of the Confom. The LNC’s strategy was devised by their legal and jurisprudence experts using international law processes starting as far back as in 1999.

Furthermore, through the LNC that has always been transparent about its strategy, other organisations now know to follow the NINAS Confom route, and to be guided by LNC-NINAS.

The Confom returns self-determination, hijacked by the 1999 Constitution, to ethnic nations. Politicians are fully aware that since the Confom, it can no longer be business as usual and they are now answerable to their people.

Elected politicians have been invited by NINAS to the dialogue table. Given that they are the ones upholding the 1999 Constitution over their people, it is hoped they have the sensibility to show solidarity with their people by getting their parties to CLOSE SHOP, then work to have the counterfeit 1999 Constitution decommissioned.

Let’s get it right: all the peoples of the Lower Niger Bloc have a responsibility to terminate that 1999 Constitution that illegitimately transfers their wealth to the Arewa Bloc!

Ndidi Uwechue is a retired Metropolitan (London) Police officer.