INEC DELINEATION: A PLEA FOR FAIRNESS AND PEACE IN WARRI       

While the INEC proposal may not be perfect, the work is significant, reckons ONOAWARIE EDEVBIE

The various reactions to the Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)’s recent proposal for the delineation of electoral wards in the Warri Federal Constituency, could be seen as clear indications of tensions and potential for conflict in the area. The Federal Constituency involved comprises Warri North, Warri South, and Warri South-West local government Areas (LGA) or Councils. Only the Ijaw communities in the electoral district seem to have accepted INEC’s proposal. The Itsekiri consider the proposal unfair, decrying that it fails to reflect the population and voter strength of the various ethnic groups in the area. The Urhobo reject it on grounds that the exercise does not reflect their numerical strength in the region, particularly in Warri South where they claim they command an overwhelming majority in population. The contention has also stirred up once again, the insidious contest for group legitimacy and entitlement, often pushed through age-old competitive claims of which one of the ethnic groups: the Ijaw, Itsekiri and Urhobo, first settled in the area now known as Warri.

The simmering wave of discontent, particularly among citizens of Warri city, thus has the potential to erupt into chaos and destruction, if care is not taken. Warri, the provincial headquarters of the former Delta Province of colonial Nigeria, has earned the infamous nickname, hot zone as a metaphor for a place characterized by heightened political violence. The City of Warri over the years has had far more than its fair share of ethnic disturbances. Beginning in 1952, and resuming in 1993, and again in 1997 and 2003, the seemingly intractable crisis has resulted in the wanton loss of lives, destruction of property, displacement of people and the disruption of the local economy.

Many believe that the instances of ethnic conflicts in Warri, are being instigated by local elites, vying for political control of the area, thereby unfairly dragging innocent citizens, many of whom are blood relatives into destructive fratricidal wars, time and time again. As one can infer, the rise of ethnic crises in Warri, seemingly more so than anywhere else in Nigeria, reflects the weighty postulate that man has the innate desire to work for self-interest, which according to Jawaharlal Nehru, a former Prime Minister of India, not only blinds one to justice and fair play but also to the simplest application of logic and reason. Sadly enough, in this era of pervasive desire for personal advantage over others, often to the detriment of the common good, the advocates for peace, are losing in the struggle against the din of those who, for self-interest, are beating the drums of war. They push ignorant young men, many uneducated and unemployed forward to fight and die for them in wars that the youth have no stake. As cowards and hypocrites, the elites are also the very same individuals who shield their children from harm’s way, shipping them away to safety in foreign countries, particularly those of Europe and America, to go to school in bids to make life better for the future of their loved ones.

Yet as ominous as the situation is, the task of exposing the antics of the nefarious war mongers in Warri and environs remains daunting, so much so in an age of easy access to technology and the rise of yellow journalism for disseminating false information to the unsuspecting public. There seems to be a lot of ignorance out there, and people need to be educated. One way to achieve this, hopefully, is to offer the public who stand to lose the most in the Warri crisis, information, as factual and as clear as possible about the situation in Warri. Foremost, especially, for this time around, there is the need to get the people to understand the role of INEC, unfairly characterized in some quarters as villains, in the seasonal delineation of electoral wards. The attempt could demystify the propaganda that the process of delineation is intended to provide some advantages to some groups over others. Finally, one could also respond, more forcefully, perhaps in another essay, to correcting many of the false and misleading information, carelessly thrown around to confuse people about the history of human settlements in the Warri area. 

So first, the purpose of occasional electoral delineation of wards by INEC as constitutionally mandated, is to ensure that each of the electoral wards in Nigeria is created roughly equal in population, to one another. More importantly, delineation is also a process used for updating and adjusting electoral boundaries to reflect changes in migration and distribution of population. As populations change through births/deaths and migration over time, electoral boundaries become outdated; redistricting measures are therefore considered necessary to reflect current demographic realities. The central role for INEC should therefore be one of delineating constituencies in terms of population and not ethnicity. In essence, the purpose of electoral delineation is the need to maintain a fair and equitable electoral system that reflects the population and ensures that all votes have equal value. The exercise thus allows boundaries of wards to be fairly drawn as Kenneth Post (1960) emphasized for a modern state, in which [legislative bodies]: parliaments, houses of assembly and local government councils are elected by universal adult suffrage and secret ballot, with one generally voting in the constituency or ward in which one lives

The three Local Government Areas of Warri North, Warri South and Warri South-West as currently constituted are far from being fair and equitable. Some view the composition of the councils as unfairly designed to give Itsekiri full political control of the constituency. Although the Itsekiri are considered the minority in at least two of the three councils, the Independent National Electoral Commission of Nigeria, had assigned to them more electoral wards than those given to the Ijaw and Urhobo majority. For example, Warri South had 12 electoral wards evenly split between the Itsekiri and Urhobo, no Ijaw even though many believe that the population of the Itsekiri is much smaller.  In Warri North, Itsekiri has six wards as against four for the Ijaw, no Urhobo. In Warri Southwest, Itsekiri has six wards and Ijaw four, again no Urhobo.  Out of a total of 32 electoral units in the Warri Federal Constituency, the Itsekiri command 18, more than the total number of wards assigned to Ijaw and Urhobo combined.

Both the Ijaw and Urhobo communities had cause to be aggrieved and accused INEC of creating fictitious electoral units as instruments for manipulating and subverting the will of the people during elections. The people made several representations to INEC to redress the situation but received no attention. So, a group of citizens of Warri, commenced a court action, George Timinimi & Others versus INEC on behalf of themselves and Ijaw communities of the Warri Federal Constituency of Delta State of Nigeria, to set aside the 2011 electoral wards. The lawsuit against INEC, was filed in cognizance of several instances of electoral malpractice in the past, since 1955 when the Western Nigeria Regional Government created a new system of election based on the Local Government Law of 1952 (No. 1 of 1953). The law provided for the first time for elections to be held by secret ballot.

The legal instrument, WRLN 176 of 1955 that established the Warri Urban Council, for example, delineated the council area into separate wards to accommodate the interest of people resident in various sections of the new Warri Township. Prior to 1955, Warri Township as a colonial settlement, was administered by the Warri Township Local Authority, independently of any indigenous body, including the Itsekiri Native Council that was created in 1930. The Authority was, however, assisted by an Advisory Board nominated by the British Colonial Resident. The Olu-Itsekiri, played no role in the government of the township, neither did he exercise any form of control.

Mr. Kenneth Post as the Leverhulme Research Scholar who studied the 1959 Federal elections in Nigeria, must have observed many of the irregularities in Nigeria’s electoral system. So was another colonial officer, Peter Lloyd, who lived in Warri,1955 through 1956, while conducting an ethnographic survey of the Warri area. These independent workers did observe for example, that: In 1955 the electoral regulations decreed, in complex but relatively unambiguous provisions, that a man should register where he lived (provided that this was in the Division of which he was ‘native’) and had paid his tax for two years; those disenfranchised by this clause could register in the ward of which they were ‘native’. Many people believed that they had much greater freedom of choice. Itsekiri women living in Sapele had no right to register in that town; so, they came to Warri, rather than to the creek villages where they had probably grown up. So, too, did many other Itsekiri husbands, who saw their votes being ‘wasted’ in a predominantly Urhobo constituency. Urhobo interpreted this as a move to pack the Warri Township, and they brought in lorry loads of electors from the surrounding villages. The final register contained over 20,000 names – double the number of adults resident in the Township. (See Llyod & Post.1960. “Where Should One Vote?” Journal of African Administration. XII, pp. 95-106)

The deliberate efforts to inflate the voters’ register with ineligible names, has since then become common practice especially in the less accessible creek areas of the Warri electoral District. A few examples will suffice to prove the allegations to be true.

First. The election investigator, Post had also reported from his findings: Here [for example in Ode-Itsekiri Local Council Area in 1959] 6,204 people registered 125 per cent of the 1952 total population; one village registered more than twice the number of persons of its population in 1952. The percentage for Ode-Itsekiri is nearly twice that for the constituency as a whole and considerably in excess of other Itsekiri areas;(Benin River Local Council area shows a registration of seventy-two per cent of the 1952 population, and Gborodo Local Council area of sixty-five per cent). The [contesting political party] N.C.N.C. alleged that the area had been ‘packed’ with Itsekiri voters by the [opposing political party] Action Group in readiness for the regional election in 1961 If, in fact, Itsekiri did come in, probably from Sapele, under the regulation allowing ‘choice’ of registration area.

Second. According to the census figures of 1952, the population of Warri Division was 54,284, made up of 20,889 Itsekiri, 10,972 Urhobo, 8,556 Ijaw, 8,379 Ibos and 5,488 others. As observed later from election results, it was quite possible that the census estimates of 1952 were inaccurate, and it was not unlikely that there was ‘packing’ of at least one Itsekiri area with electors brought in from outside. The population of Warri Township itself at this time was put at 19,526; the 3,133 figures for Itsekiri accounted for only 16 percent while Urhobo and Ibo commanded 33 percent and 31 percent respectively of the population (See K. W. J. Post: The Nigeria Federal Elections of 1959, p. 414.)

Third. Michael Okorodudu, a strong member of the Itsekiri Establishment, pleaded with the Willink Commission (investigating the fears of minorities in an independent Nigeria), to recognize the ‘precarious position’ of the Itsekiri in the City of Warri. He stressed that in the town of Warri where they [Itsekiri] number less than a sixth of the population, they consider it an injustice that other tribes should have a vote, or any say in the affairs of the town. Michael Okorodudu had used his position as the Western Nigeria Commissioner in the United Kingdom, to appear before the Willink Commission held in London in 1957 and 1958.

Fourth. The merging by Obasanjo Local government reforms of 1976 of the whole Warri Division, including Warri Urban District Council, into one Warri Local Government Area as many felt, had the effect of disenfranchising non-Itsekiri elements in Warri Division by way of gerrymandering. Several Ijaw territories in the Warri Division were believed to be gerrymandered into districts that favor the Itsekiri and so deprived them, the Ijaw, of adequate representation in the government of the region. For example, Itsekiri villages of Ode-Itsekiri, Orugbo, Obodo and Omadino were by electoral registration exercise of 1976, included in Ijaw areas of Gbaramatu, Egbema and Ogbe-Ijaw as wards in the Warri Local Government Area, solely as many Ijaw believed, to give electoral advantage to the Itsekiri over other groups. The government also transferred the Ijaws in Ogbe-Ijoh near Warri Township, over their objection to merge with their kith and kin in Burutu Local Government Area. The presence of Ijaw in the former Warri Division was also diluted by the illegal transfer of Tsekelewu, an oil-rich Ijaw constituency from Bendel State to join Ondo state, without the knowledge and consent of the people of Tsekelewu. It took another government, this time, one controlled by the National Party of Nigeria (NPN), in 1983, to dissolve an All-Itsekiri Member Committee that orchestrated the transfer, and to return the Ijaw communities of Tsekelewu and Ogbe-Ijaw back to Warri Local Government Area.

Fifth. In more recent times since the creation of the Delta State in 1991, a precinct as small as Ode-Itsekiri that was regarded as one ward, is now split into three wards namely Ode-Itsekiri, Obodo and Ubeji ostensibly to increase Itsekiri representation in governance.  Also rarely mentioned is the issue of several allegations of election rigging, yet to be documented, of stuffing ballot boxes from the creek areas. These unsubstantiated ballot boxes, including those from nonexistent polling stations in the creeks, were intended to rig elections for favored political candidates.

With the overwhelming evidence of election irregularities that have been forced on the people over the years, one can imagine the level of relief that the Supreme Court Order SC413/2016 delivered to INEC, has brought to the people of Warri Federal Constituency. The court obviously dissatisfied with the situation in the area directed INEC to conduct a fresh delineation of the wards in the constituency in the three local government areas, to reflect the ethnic composition of the region. The newly defined distribution of electoral wards, presented by INEC to the public on April 2, 2025, after several consultations with representatives of the Ijaw, Itsekiri and Urhobo ethnic nationalities are as follows:

· Warri North LGA now comprises 18 electoral wards, with 10 assigned to the Ijaw, and eight to the Itsekiri

· Warri Southwest LGA now consists of 19 electoral wards, with 14 for the Ijaw and five for the Itsekiri

· Warri South LGA now features 20 electoral wards, with three for the Ijaw, eight for the Itsekiri and nine for Urhobo.

While the proposal by INEC may appear not be perfect and thus requires further negotiations among the representatives of the various ethnic nationalities involved, the work is already significant. It is an improvement over previous efforts towards electoral reforms in the Warri area. To paraphrase the Delta State Resident Commissioner, Etekamba Udo Umoren, the work speaks to the determination, resilience and unity of purpose of all concerned, to implement the order of the Supreme Court. It is a win for all citizens who desire and deserve peace to be able to work and live together in their communities, instead of engaging in never-ending internecine conflicts. Warri, at peace, will eventually develop and prosper, and everyone irrespective of his or her ethnic nationality will benefit.

Prof Edevbie is of the Urhobo Historical Society