Leader of the Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force (NDPVF), Mujahid Asari Dokubo, has said that his people were not consulted before the Nigerian nation was formed and as such should be allowed to go their separate ways.
Dokubo, who spoke as the Guest of the Week on Liberty Radio monitored in Kaduna at the weekend, said: “We the people of Calabar, Bony, Nembe, Ijaw, Okrika, Okoko etcetera, having signed treaty with the British Government now want this treaty to be validated and we should be allowed to go our ways to become a separate country. We can then decide to form union like EU.
“Nigeria was not created with the consent of our people; political engineering requires that consent of the people must be sought when a nation will be created. If the people agreed to live together, it is okay and the people cannot be forced to be together.
“If it requires that the only way to resolve this quagmire is to have a Sovereign National Conference, let us have it. You can hold Sovereign National Conference without dismantling the government institutions like it happened in other countries. It is about people deciding what they want.
“There is no sense of nationhood in what is Nigeria, what is keeping Nigeria is the ‘chuwachuwa’ that is going on. I have travelled all over the world and Nigeria is the most backward country. Nigeria is very backward and there is need for redefinition. Nigeria gives Benin Republic light; Benin Republic enjoys light for near 24 hours every day, but here, it is not so.
“Benin Republic has robust security; you can go round the country without anything happening to you. When the foundation of a building is not strong, the building cannot stand and that is why we are saying that if we sit down together at the Sovereign National Conference, everyone will be happy with the outcome.
“We will go to the National Conference, we will go there with an agenda and it is the Sovereign National Conference, but if we boycott the National Conference, our plan will not succeed. We will go to the conference and demand that it should be totally sovereign. For instance, people will say Nigeria’s unity is sacrosanct, it is a lie, it must be debated. We going to raise every issue, nothing is sacrosanct. All of us are preparing to go to the conference”.
He recalled that when President Olusegun Obasanjo wanted him to go to the Political Reforms Conference, he refused, regretting that, however, that he did not attend the conference.
Dokubo said: “If I had known, I would have gone to the Political Reforms Conference. Now we are going and we believe our inputs will go long way in defining the conference. We believe the conference will actually led to Sovereign National Conference.
“We can decide to live together and say having resolve on these terms, until we do that development will not come, transformation will not come.”
