Contending Issues in the Niger Delta Crisis of Nigeria - Journal of ...

Dr. Esekumemu V. Clark
commitment to joint struggle with the other ethnic nationalities
in the Niger Delta area for self-determination.
- We agreed to remain within Nigeria but to demand and work for
self-government and resource control for the Ijaw people.
Conference approved that the best way for Nigeria is a
federation of ethnic nationalities. The federation should be run
on the basis of equality and social justice.”
The Kaiama Declaration referred to the predicament of the Land
Use Decree (1978), the Petroleum Decrees (1969 and 1991) and the
National Inland Waterways Authority Decree No. 13 (1997) etc., all of
which have put the Ijaw nation and its environs at a very
disadvantaged position within the Nigerian Federation.
Such
lesiglations promulgated by the Nigerian government as the Kaiama
Declaration states, that “Ijaw people have been robbed of their natural
rights to ownership and control of their land and resources”. Indeed,
the respective decrees which were enacted, opened up the Ijawland to
uncontrollable oil and gas exploration and exploitation by the
transnational oil corporations without paying more attention to the
negative effects of pollution and environmental degradation that are
devastating the area. It went further to stress that these decrees were
promulgated without the consents of the local communities or even
put to a referendum to be decided by those whose lives, resources,
land etc. were being gravely affected by such legislations. As the
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