There are betrayals that wound. And then there are betrayals that define generations.
June 2nd 2025, the mother body of the Urhobo tribe, Urhobo Progressive Union (UPU) wrote this stern letter to the President, demanding emphatically that Tantita cannot be allowed to secure pipelines in host communities, in line with the PIA.
The letter shook the Niger Delta region and Tantita knew that with such demands by one of the biggest tribe in the South South, other tribes will follow suit.
For one brief beautiful moment, the Urhobo people had a voice. Then the phone calls from government house came.
They played their game through the Governor, an Urhobo son, who WARNED the UPU President to stop further action and that was how that agitation died the same day. Whatever amount of money that the UPU get monthly from Tantita since then till now is between them and their God. But history had recorded them that when they were needed to protect the tribe, they sold out to Gbaramatu not Ijaw. History has already written its verdict.
Eight months after they sold out, God raised a new generation of Niger Deltans from Urhobo, Ijaw, Isoko, Itsekiri, Edo, Ilaje, Ikot-Abasi, Eastern Obolo, Ohaji-Egbema, Ogoni, Opobos, Ikwerre etc to begin a wave of agitation that is about tearing the region apart.
We did not have Tantita’s billions. We did not have the Governor’s phone number on speed dial. We had our voices, our social capital, our conviction and the knowledge that we were right. What the old men of UPU could not accomplish with all their resources and all their contacts, we have brought to the edge of victory with our own sweat and sacrifice. Today, we are 80% close to compelling the President of Nigeria to decentralize the ₦2.1 trillion pipeline surveillance contract.
What it means is that every Urhobo actually want to control the pipelines in their communities but their own elected son is the witch that cries at night and the baby dies in the morning.
Even Tantita and Maton agree that the job should be decentralized but they are asking it should be done after election. Why after election and not now? If they agree that indeed it should go the way we agitate, why fight it to be for next year? Oh oh, so that they can have enough money to sponsor candidates across the country to fill various positions including their ally Bala Wunti who has declared for Bauchi Governor, and those they sponsor will now use political numbers to frustrate next year decentralization. No one is a fool. They want to buy more time to buy more people. The game plan is not unknown to people like us who play political chessboard and can read their plots.
If UPU sold out, we are not them that will sell out when demands have not been met.
For every move the N2.1 trillion chop alone gang make, we know ahead of time. Two days ago, I made a post that Dennis Otuaro and Tantita/Maton will be mobilising Phase 2&3 fake ex militants to protest in their favor on Sunday. Yesterday, they actually protested. Shouldn’t it tell them that there is no secret in their camp that I don’t know? Even their own people are angry with the way and manner they have held this contract to themselves.
Enough of these games. The Niger Delta is speaking with one voice now. Urhobo. Ijaw. Isoko. Itsekiri. Edo etc. We are not enemies. We are a people who have been kept poor so that one family could be kept powerful. And we are done. The Niger Delta region is in harmony that Mr President has to decentralize the pipeline surveillance if the peace in the region must be sustained and one family will not stop it no matter the billions of bribes paid.
The generation that was raised to finish what the sellouts abandoned has come. And we are not going anywhere.
If the wealth won’t flow round, then let it not flow at all.
Guard your pipeline and I guard my own.
Fejiro Oliver
Voice of the Streets and Defender of the Oppressed
