South, Middle Belt Leaders Demand Nations out of Nigeria

Kemi Olaitan in Ibadan

South and Middle Belt leaders under the aegis of Nigerian Indigenous Nationalities Alliance for Self-Determination (NINAS) yesterday insisted that Nigeria should cease to exist demanding for several ethnic nations.

The alliance, also, disclosed that it would be observing a 120-day ultimatum to consult with the people in the involved regions on its five-point demand to the federal government.

The Chairman of the alliance, Prof. Banji Akintoye made this demand during a world press conference held in Ibadan yesterday.

At the conference, Akintoye listed the five demands as follows: “To formally acknowledge the sovereignty dispute as declared by NINAS; to formally commit to the wholesale decommissioning of the repudiated 1999 constitution and to formally commit to the suspension of further national elections under the disputed 1999 Constitution.

The fourth demand, according to Akintoye, is to formally commit to initiating a time bound transitioning during which a two-stage process for the distillation of successor-constitutional arrangements founded upon the self-determination rights of the constituent components of Nigeria and ratified by regional referendums, will be undertaken.

He said the fifth demand was to formally invite the constituent nationality components of Nigeria to work out the framework, mandate, composition, timeframe and other modalities for the said transitioning.”

He maintained that with the country continuing to wobble and fumble in what he described as its sure demise as one political union, the group would use the period to carry all the stakeholders along, stating that the federal government and elected office holders in the regions involved have failed to acknowledge the demands.

The text of the world conference read in part, “Today, the Train of NINAS Consultations and Engagements on the December 16, 2020 Proclamation moves on from the Government of Nigeria to the Peoples of Nigeria who are the true owners of the sovereignties forcefully aggregated and federated as Nigeria, hence the conference theme : ‘Activating People’s Power’.

“That by the December 16, 2020 Joint Multi-Regional Constitutional Force Majeure (CFM) Proclamation, a Union Dispute with the Federation of Nigeria, as represented by the Federal Government of Nigeria, was declared by the constituent components of Nigeria, cooperating under the aegis of Nigerian Indigenous Nationalities Alliance for Self-Determination, NINAS, on account of grave constitutional grievances bordering on the unilateral imposition of unitary constitutional arrangements on Nigeria since 1999, which must be addressed forthwith failing which the peoples of the alliance territories may have to reconsider their allegiance to the disputed 1999 Constitution.

“That in the said Proclamation, NINAS gave the Federal Government of Nigeria a 90-Day period of notice within which to address five demands.

“That at the expiration of the said 90-day period of notice, no formal contact or statement was made by the Federal Government of Nigeria in response to the December 16, 2020 proclamation, despite frenzied attempts by agents of the Federal Government of Nigeria to rush to the National Assembly for amendments to the fraudulent 1999 Constitution on provisions touching directly upon many of the grave constitutional grievances raised in the union dispute proclamation of December 16, 2020.

“While NINAS shepherds the task of dismantling the 1999 Constitution, the constituent regional organizations/initiatives will under the guidance of NINAS, midwife the emergence of cohesive regional charters/constitutions that will form the basis of UN-SC mandated self-determination referendums to terminating the failed Lugardian experiment of 1914.”