By Emma Amaize
WARRI—THE Federated Niger Delta Ijaw Communities, FNDIC, yesterday, called on government and its agencies to ward off a repeat of the gory Warri-Ijaw/Itsekiri bloodbath of 1997 and 2003 by addressing the remote causes of the crisis, which are still looming large even as the  2011 general elections draw near.

FNDIC, in a statement, signed by its secretary, Mr. Kingsley Otuaro, which was made available to Vanguard in Warri said, “More often than not, history is said to repeat itself when lessons are not properly learnt. In other words, when a people refuse to rise above, but choose to remain in the same level of reasoning and primordiality, it causes them an avoidable crisis, and the chances are that history might repeat itself.”

It said: “It is worrisome to note that the remote causes of Warri-Ijaw/Itsekiri crisis of 1997 and 2003 respectively are looming large and unattended to by Government and its agencies. The FNDIC wishes that as the 2011 general elections draw near with attendant electioneering schemes, the Warri perennial crisis, like a Pandora’s Box, must be kept safe from emitting its content.”

It noted that trouble started shortly after elections were conducted in 1996 in the newly created Warri South West Local Government when the 10 wards for the Ijaw kingdoms of Gbaramatu, Ogbe-Ijoh, Isaba and Diebiri were, in a political intrigue, reduced to four wards and Itsekiri’s three wards increased to six wards, in addition to the relocation of the headquarters from Ogbe-Ijoh to Ogidigben, an Itsekiri town.

FNDIC said it was the consequential reactions, accusations and counter accusations that led to the wasteful Warri-Ijaw/Itsekiri ethnic crisis of 1997.

Pointing out that prior to the 2003 general elections, the Warri_Ijaw, which occupied more land mass in Warri South-West urged INEC to have recourse to the 2001 projection of the 1991 population figure, which puts the Ijaw at a 63 per cent population majority over the Itsekiri’s 37 per cent population minority  in electoral ward and constituency delineation, but, the Commission, which promised to address the imbalances in its Report of Activities, August 1998_December 1999, page 34, paragraph 5, failed to take appropriate action.

The group asserted that the Itsekiri position as encapsulated by Prof Itse Sagay was Warri is an Itsekiri homeland and even if it assumed, without conceding that the Ijaw settle communities of Warri North and Warri South_West have a larger population than the Itsekiri indigenes, it does not follow that the Ijaws were entitled to a higher political representation in the state.

It, therefore, appealed to Warri Ijaw and Itsekiri political leaders and stakeholders for attitudinal modification and constructive engagement and challenged government and the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to comply to all relevant laws of the land in the conduct of the 2011 general elections.