By Emma Amaize

WARRI — ETHNIC organisations in the lower Niger territory, under the auspices of The Alliance, yesterday, called for a sovereign meeting of all the ethnic nationalities of Nigeria, before the 50th anniversary of the country on October 1, to negotiate, for the first time, the re-working of the constitutional arrangement for the distressed Nigerian union.

The self-determination organisations of the Anang, the Edo, the Efik, the Ibibio, the Igbo, the Ijaw, the Ilaje, the Isoko, the Itsekiri, the Ogoni, and the Urhobo and other ethnic nationalities in a statement at the end of a meeting in Warri, said: “Our position is that, elections, even if free and fair, will not address the fundamental questions facing Nigeria at this time, especially as exposed in the on-going angry debate over zoning, which finally lays bare the falsehood of “One Nigeria”.

The statement was signed by Fred Agbeyegbe, chairman of the Lower Niger Congress and President, Itsekiri Peoples Congress; Alhaji Mujahid Dokubo-Asari of the Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force, Tony Nnadi, Movement for New Nigeria,   Alfred Ilenre, Ethnic Minority and Indigenous Rights Organisation of Africa;  Efe Okpomo and Prince Kingsley Oberuruaria, both of the Urhobo for Change; Razak Amatoru, Ijaw Youth Council; Mr. Rex Anighoro, Niger Delta Christian Youths Movement; Comrade Mark Olise, Niger Delta Peoples Salvation Front;  Engr. Alex Nonyelum Ayatolamuo, League of Good Governance in Igbo Communities and Apostle Kalada M. Jene of the Vicar, Great Commonwealth of the Niger Delta.

Said the group: “As we approach the 50th anniversary of the hoax called Nigeria, in place of elections that only exacerbate the situation, we demand that the proprietors of the Nigerian state should immediately convene a sovereign meeting of all ethnic nationalities of Nigeria before the 1st October, 2010, to negotiate, for the first time, the re-working of the constitutional arrangement for the distressed Nigerian union”.

“Accordingly, we warn that should the proprietors of Nigeria prefer to proceed heedlessly into another election without first resolving questions of the terms of the Nigerian Union, we will not hesitate to mobilise the masses of the Lower Niger to reject the election and its products and thereafter the 1999 constitution itself,” they said.

“We would also like to correct the erroneous impression being peddled around in certain quarters that the emergence of Dr Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan as President of the Nigerian State will not deter groups such as ours from agitating for the restoration of the sovereignty of the various component groups within our Alliance”, it added.

It warned that if the advice was not heeded, the organizations would “take steps to reverse our slave status in our own God_ given homelands in exercise of our right to self determination as enunciated in the United Nations Declaration of the Right of Indigenous Peoples”.