The Need for Diaspora Commitment to Our Struggle for Self-Determination

As a critical milestone in the ljaw National Congress Agenda on the internationalization of the Struggle for Self-Determination, the President of Congress leveraged his Fellowship Award Ceremony to engage the ljaw Community in Ghana to plant the West African (Ghana) Chapter of the apex socio-cultural organisation of the ljaw people.
In a brief ceremony attended by ljaws across the region in Accra on the 31 August 2025, the President educated members on the history, objectives, achievements, challenges and prospects of INC, and also the necessity to launch the West African chapter with the headquarters in Ghana. 
A caretaker committee to oversee their affairs until they fulfil all constitutional requirements for formal inaugural are met, was set up.
The details of the INC President's address are below:

A Call to Destiny: The Need for Diaspora Commitment to Our Struggle for Self-Determination
Being an Address by Professor Benjamin O. Okaba, President, Ijaw National Congress (INC) Global, to the Ijaw Community in West Africa (Accra, Ghana), on 31st August, 2025.

My beloved Ijaw brothers and sisters, elders, leaders, and the vibrant youth of our nation in West Africa (Ghana),
I bring you revolutionary greetings from the ancestral homelands of the Niger Delta, from the creeks that cradle our history, and from the headquarters of the Ijaw National Congress. I stand before you today not merely as a leader, but as a fellow compatriot in the great and just struggle for the dignity, justice, resource control, and ultimate sovereignty of the Ijaw people.
My engagement with you here in West Africa (Accra, Ghana) is profoundly significant. West Africa (Ghana) stands as a beacon of democratic resilience and Pan-African solidarity. It is on this hallowed ground, rich with its own history of self-determination, that we must recommit ourselves to the most sacred duty of our generation: the liberation of the Ijaw nation from the shackles of internal colonialism and environmental genocide.
For too long, we have been patient. For too long, we have negotiated. For too long, we have watched as the wealth of our land becomes the poverty of our people. This ends now. The season of appeal is over; the time for assertion has come.
We Operate from a Position of Legal and Historical Truth
Let no one, anywhere, be deceived: our quest for self-determination is not secessionism. It is not rebellion. It is a right anchored in the unassailable pillars of international law and pre-colonial history.

Before the artificial creation called Nigeria, we were a sovereign people. Our forefathers entered into treaties with the British Crown as equals—mutually reached agreements recognized our autonomy and our control over our lands and resources. These treaties were not nullified; they were violated. The Nigerian state, through a series of deliberate and oppressive legal instruments—from the 1969 Petroleum Decree to the recent Petroleum Industry Act (PIA)—constructed a system of resource theft on an industrial scale.
They took our oil, they poisoned our waters, and they left our people in a state of perpetual suffering. The figures are a testament to this crime:· Over 6,800 recorded oil spills turning our paradise into a toxic wasteland.· Daily gas flaring equivalent to 41% of Africa's total, poisoning the air our children breathe.· A derivation principle that has been systematically eroded, reducing our share of our own wealth to a paltry, insulting token.This is not development; it is expropriation. It is not governance; it is genocide by other means.
 A New Strategic Direction: The Internationalization of Our Struggle 
Given this reality, the Ijaw National Congress has embarked on a fundamental strategic shift. We are no longer limiting our struggle to the corridors of power in Abuja, which have proven to be deaf to our cries.
We are taking our case to the world.
We are invoking the United Nations Charter, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. We are compiling our treaty documents and preparing to present our case before global judicial and diplomatic bodies. We are building a coalition of international civil society, environmental activists, and human rights defenders.
At the recent 2nd Global Ijaw Convention in Houston, Texas, we declared to the world that the Ijaw people are awake. We are mobilizing our diaspora from the Americas to Europe, and now, critically, here in West Africa. The Mayor of Houston himself declared July 5th as "Ijaw Convention Day." This is the power of a united, global Ijaw voice.
The Critical Role of the Ijaw Diaspora in West Africa (Ghana)
This is where you, my brothers and sisters in West Africa (Ghana), become the vanguard of this new front. You are not exiled spectators; you are essential actors in this final act of our liberation.
You possess what our brothers at home often lack: the relative safety to speak truth to power, access to international platforms, and the professional expertise in law, media, finance, and diplomacy that this struggle desperately needs.
Therefore, my charge to you today is direct and urgent:

1. Organize Immediately: Before I leave this country, I charge you to form the INC West Africa (Ghana Chapter). Elect your leaders, establish your committees—Legal, Media, Finance, Youth Mobilization. You must be a structured, efficient machine for advocacy.

2. Leverage Your Host Nations: West Africa is a respected region. You must build alliances with its civil society, with its vibrant media, with its parliamentarians and thought leaders. Educate them about our struggle. Make the plight of the Ijaw people a topic of discussion in the halls of power and the universities here.

3. Amplify Our Truth: Use your digital platforms. Document our history. Share the images of our degraded environment. Tell the stories of our people. Break the media blackout that has hidden our suffering for decades.

4. Support the Homeland: Your remittances are vital, but we need more than that. We need your skills, your networks, and your unwavering voice applying pressure on the international stage.

5. Be Our Ambassadors: I wish to also, on behalf of Congress, charge you to be true ambassadors of Ijaw Nation in all your precepts and deeds. Be reminded that Ijaw means truth, and Ijaws all over the world are known for their truthfulness, trustworthiness, courage, enterprise, resilience, and humility. We are also known to be peace loving, law abiding and hospitable. I enjoin you to demonstrate these unique traits of ours in all your dealings and engagements amongst yourselves, with your neighbours, relevant government authorities, citizens and residents of the West African (Ghanaian) society. For the sake of emphasis, I implore you to shun violence, cultism, and all forms of criminality.
 
Conclusion: Our Destiny Awaits
My people, we stand on the right side of history. We are not begging for what is ours; we are demanding it. We are not victims; we are a resilient nation rising to claim our destiny.
The journey will require sacrifice. It will require unity. It will require an unshakeable commitment to the ideal that our children, and their children, will inherit a land of prosperity and dignity, not a poisoned legacy of poverty.
Let us leave here today with a covenant—a covenant to act, to mobilize, and to fight not with weapons, but with the irresistible power of truth, justice, and an unbreakable will.
The Ijaw nation expects every one of you to do your duty.

Thank you. May the spirit of our ancestors guide us.
Long Live the Ijaw Nation!
 Prof. Benjamin OkabaPresident, Ijaw National Congress (INC) Global