Former Campaign spokesman of President Bola Tinubu in the south east, Dr. Josef Onoh has told the former Niger Delta militant leader Asari Dokubu that the president isn’t perturbed by his ranting, nor intrested in any discussion about a second term in office because it will form a distraction on the President’s ongoing reforms.
Dokubu had accused President Tinubu of betrayal and neglect, threatening that henceforth the people of Niger Delta would form alliance with the north to scuttle Tinubu’s second term possibility.
Onoh is his response to Dokubu told the former militant leader that the President is purely intrested and focused on stabilising the economy, food security and development of all sectors of the economy, maintaining that these heavy tasks are too deafening for his ears to hear the “popping noises of popcorns and soda water.”
Onoh recalled that Asari Dokubo in his apology to his forefathers insinuated that his forefathers were not wrong in forming an alliance with northern Nigeria in the past, and as young men, they too will now start that same alliance because the President allegedly betrayed Dokubu.
But Onoh said, “May I remind Asari that such alliance his forefathers and Ijaws held with the north was commercial and Agricultural alliance structured more on business benefits and never political. Therefore any political alliance against President Tinubu ahead of 2027 will fail.
“The South East have continuously advocated for an Igbo President and won’t support any other candidate against Tinubu come 2027 from any other region as such opposition candidate will still seek a second term in office at the detriment of Igbo presidency.
“The South West has produced two presidents and a vice president, the south South has produced a vice president and President, the north has produced two presidents and three vice presidents and after President Tinubu’s term in office, power will shift to the north and only President Tinubu can guarantee an Igbo vice president which will lay the foundation for an Igbo presidency.
“Even the north are aware of that political complexity, hence they won’t make such polical mistake to deny President Tinubu a second term in office if he decides to seek for it.”
Continuing, Onoh reminded Dokubu that, his ethnic nationality, the Ijaw population in Nigeria is about 15 million of which many are found as migrant fishermen in camps as far west as Sierra Leone, Ghana and as far east as Gabon.
“As of 2023 general elections, they accounted for around 6.9 percent of our country’s 223 million people, hence they can’t make any significant political impact with your intended political suicide alliance. Your current outburst and threat to form and alliance with the North against Tinubu come 2027 is coming from a man who doesn’t believe he and the entire Ijaws are part of Nigeria; when you continously made reference points during your agitation for an independent Ijaw State by your defunct Niger Delta Volunteer Force that you led.”
Onoh further recalled that Asari Dokubu argued that the Ijaw ethnic minority entered into treaties with the British to become British protectorates but not Nigeria, noting that Dokubu argued that there was no single extant document whatsoever where Ijaws consented to becoming Nigerians as their treaties with the British did not join them into nationhood or relationship with other parts of Nigeria. Rather, that the treaties established direct relationship between the British and the Ijaw nation.
“So I’m surprised at Dokubo Asari’s outburst and threat to form alliance with the North to remove President Tinubu from power come 2027. He’s now intrested in the political affairs of a country he never believed he is a part of. Clearly his outburst is purely self serving and of no political relevance. Even the then British empire neither anticipated an Ijaw uprising nor an Ijaw presidency aside from the president Jonathan’s accidental presidency which the north still took back in 2015 with the help President Tinubu.
“Even the post-independence Nigeria, so to speak, nationalized all the nations that made up Nigeria. The post- independence political arrangement in Nigeria did not envisage much political power for the Ijaw ethnic minority and it still subsists in the Nigeria political space till date and all northern political elites are fully aware of it. Asari Dokubo’s alliance is a match of political suicide for the ijaw people, hence he’s matching alone.”
Onoh again went back memory lane to refresh Dokubu that previous oppositions by both a section northern extraction and Niger Delta had opposed former Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Mohammadu Bihari’s second terms, respectively, but all failed. “So it will actually be a bad omen for President Tinubu’s second term in office if we have no threat from an Ijaw.”
On Dokubo’s profiling of Yorubas as betrayals that the Ijaws can’t work with, Onoh told Dokubo that political existence is an arbitrary activity of human society, but that the mode of succession is a responsibility and changes in it are choices to make.
“The Ijaw nation has been arbitrarily incorporated into Nigeria political space. The choice and responsibility for change in the fortunes of the Ijaw nation in the reality of current Nigeria political equation lies squarely on the shoulders of the Ijaw people and not Dokubo Asari. Despite being a minority tribe, from the day Isaac Boro took some men into the jungle in revolt against the Federal Government till date, the Ijaws have continued to work assiduously for improvement in their mode of political inclusion in Nigeria using different and even sometimes scary methodologies. They have manoeuvred themselves to a place of decisive reckoning in Nigeria’s improbable political equation.
“Perfectly or imperfectly it has been a struggle to integrate the Ijaw man fully into the Nigerian political space. It is a struggle that has recorded measured setbacks and measured successes. It is a struggle that has raised the stake of the Ijaws in national politics. It is a struggle that has raised the Ijaw man from expendable minority to leadership in the political organogram of Nigeria. It is a struggle that has defined Ijaw consciousness in present day Nigeria and any attempt to go against or form political alliances with any region within Nigeria against President Tinubu will only destroy that successful achievements and will finally amount to the Ijaws inhaling political Hydrogen cyanide served by their son, Dokubo Asari.”
