NIGERIAN Indigenous Nationalities Alliance for Self-Determination has said ethnic nationalities in the Middle Belt and southern Nigeria have begun the process of orderly transition to full self-determination and sovereignty.
The NINAS, which is the umbrella body for ethnic nationalities from the Middle Belt, South-East, South-South and South-West, said those who were bent on governing Nigerian by all means and those jostling to contest political offices in 2023 elections were the set of people pushing the country into a violent disintegration.
The Chairman of the NINAS, Prof. Banji Akintoye, and the Secretary, Mr Tony Enadi, read an address of the group at a press conference in Ibadan on Wednesday on behalf of all members of the group, who joined the press conference online.
Akintoye said, “Those who insist on Governing Nigeria with the imposed, fraudulent and unworkable 1999 Constitution, as well as those who still aspire to contest further national elections under that Constitution, should know they are the ones pushing Nigeria towards a violent disintegration.
“But the ethnic nations currently trapped in the failed Lugardian experiment of 1914 will do everything legitimate under appropriate international instruments to extricate them from the union of death, attrition and backwardness that Nigeria has become for them. NINAS urges our various people across the alliance territory to remain calm and confident as measured steps are being taken towards ending our bondage.”
Akintoye, who is a Professor of History and a former member of the Senate, explained that with the expiration of the 90-day notice of grave constitutional grievances issued by NINAS to the Federal Government without any action taken to address the grievances, the various ethnic nationalities now had their sovereignty back and could do anything they like with it.
He said, “For the avoidance of doubt, the NINAS proclamation of constitutional dispute on December 16, 2020, terminated the life of the fraudulent 1999 Constitution of Nigeria and therefore restored our sovereignty that was confiscated by that constitution.
“What we are doing today is to outline the processes and modality for the necessary and orderly transition to our full self-determination and sovereignty in the world. Therefore, we hereby call on the peoples of our alliance territory to rise to the challenge of shaking off the shackles and manacles hitherto imposed on them by the defunct 1999 Constitution.
“The tasks before us are to distill and perfect the documents of their sovereignty namely map of their territory and draft constitutions or charters of relationships for multi-ethnic blocks.
“To embark upon and intensify their effort towards UN-Mandated referendums and plebiscites. In the face of the demise of the 1999 Constitution, which had been an impediment to the control and management of their territories and resources (particularly the 68-item exclusive list), the governors of the state in the alliance territory are hereby advised to, in the interim, work with their state assemblies to make necessary legislative and regulatory arrangement for the effective control and security of their respective territories as a part of the transitioning process to the new order which has been commenced today.
“As a part of the overall management of transition process, we call on our people to co-operate with our state governors for the maintenance of law, order, peace and good governance.”
The secretary of NINAS, Tony Enadi, said their various ethnic nationalities, which were part of NINAS, were now free to take their sovereignty and do whatever they liked with it.
A Yoruba activist, Chief Sunday Adeyemo, popularly known as Sunday Igboho, said prominent Yoruba people and all traditional rulers in Yorubaland were in support of the move for self-determination, while calling on anyone who was not in support of it to come out publicly and say so. (Punch)
