By Boma Lilian Braide Esq.
The water remembers. It remembers when we were queens and kings of the creeks, when our voices carried across the rivers like thunder, and when no external force could dictate the terms of our existence.
Today, as a daughter of the Ijaw nation, I look at our political landscape and my heart breaks into a thousand pieces. The recent withdrawal of Pastor Tonye Cole from the political race reopened a wound that never properly healed. I immediately texted him a single, urgent question: “Why?” His response was a resigned, familiar phrase; “It is well.” At that exact moment, my thoughts were screaming so loudly inside my head, “Not again!” It felt like a brutal repetition of an old script. Every single time, without fail, they treat the Ijaw man badly, pushing him out of the room where decisions are made.
This leadership class continually trades our birthright for political crumbs, leaving me with a profound sadness I cannot shake. Every four years, we are forced to watch the same exhausting, predictable cycle play out. We have become the laughing stock of the Nigerian politics. We roar like lions in the morning, only to allow ourselves to be led like sheep to the slaughter house by nightfall. This pattern is not merely a string of tactical errors. It is a structural and psychological condition that has calcified into our political culture. We begin every election season with unparalleled bravery, massive energy, clarity, and a list of demands. We mobilise, we protest, we declare our rights. Yet at the decisive moment we fold. We trade collective power for personal gain. We accept crumbs while the harvest is taken from our lands allowing our leaders to be used as mere pawns, chess pieces, and foot soldiers on a board completely controlled by outsiders.
Call it what it is, a political Stockholm syndrome. When a people are held hostage by extractive systems for generations, they can begin to see the captor as a provider. When political actors poison our rivers, burn our gas, and extract our wealth, then return during elections with token gifts, the damaged political imagination can mistake those gifts for benevolence. A motorcycle, a solar lamp, a bag of rice, or a ten thousand naira note becomes a substitute for structural justice. We applaud the giver and forget the theft.
This is not a partisan indictment. The major parties have all participated in this system. From the coastal edges of Ondo and Edo, through Rivers and Bayelsa, to the riverine communities of Delta and Akwa Ibom, the script is the same. Political machines arrive with cash and spectacle. They leave with votes. They do not stay to build roads, to clean oil spills, to fund health care, or to restore fisheries. They do not invest in education or in the infrastructure that would make our communities resilient. They know they do not have to. They know that the combination of poverty, fragmentation, and short-term survival instincts will deliver the votes they need.
The spectacle in Rivers State is instructive. The conflict between an incumbent and a predecessor is not only a personal rivalry. It is a mirror of a deeper structural problem. An Ijaw son may occupy the governor’s office, but the expectation of loyalty to an external power broker remains. When disagreements arise, the Ijaw polity does not close ranks. Instead, it fractures. Elders, youth groups, and political actors align with different external centres of power. We tear ourselves apart while the larger system remains intact.
Delta State offers another painful example. The region produces a disproportionate share of the oil wealth that sustains the state and the nation. Yet Ijaw communities are routinely relegated to secondary roles in governance. The highest offices are often out of reach. When an Ijaw candidate shows real ambition, the pressure to step down, to accept a consolation prize, or to be bought off intensifies at the last minute. The result is a steady stream of symbolic representation and token appointments that do not translate into structural change.
Even Bayelsa State, our most homogenous political home, has not been immune. The state has been turned into a dependent outpost. Political life there is often conducted under the shadow of Abuja. During elections, communities are militarized. Young people are paid paltry sums to snatch ballot boxes and intimidate their neighbours. The leaders who emerge from such processes rarely prioritize environmental remediation, health care, or education. They prioritize survival within the national political economy.
Why do we accept this? Part of the answer lies in a minority complex that has been cultivated over generations. We have been taught to believe that because we are numerically small and geographically dispersed across several states, we cannot set national terms. That belief is false. Our geographic position along the southern maritime border gives us leverage. Nigeria’s economy cannot function without the peace of our creeks. Yet we negotiate from a position of weakness because we lack a unified, non-partisan political command structure.
Other major ethnic blocs in Nigeria have developed cultural mechanisms that protect collective interests across party lines. They maintain consensus on key strategic questions and punish those who betray the collective. The Ijaw political house, by contrast, is fragmented. We are divided into Western, Central, and Eastern blocs. Internal jealousy and rivalry consume us. When an Ijaw son or daughter rises to prominence, it is sometimes their own people who are recruited to pull them down. This internal sabotage is a major reason we are treated as expendable by national political machines.
Our representatives in national assemblies and federal boards are often the most silent and compliant. They vote for policies that harm our region because they want to protect their personal seats and committee positions. We have forgotten the intellectual foundation of our struggle. Our fathers did not rely on muscle alone. They fought with logic and strategy.
Harold Dappa Biriye used constitutional arguments to demand minority rights during the pre-independence conferences. Isaac Adaka Boro presented a detailed economic manifesto during the twelve-day revolution, exposing the systematic underdevelopment of the Delta. The Kaiama Declaration of 1998 linked environmental justice with true federalism in a way that remains a model for strategic political thinking. Today, that intellectual tradition has been eroded by a culture of thuggery, praise singing, and the pursuit of quick money.
The social and economic costs of our political submission are visible everywhere. Schools sink into the mud. Primary health centres lack basic medicines. Women die in childbirth because there are no functional boats to transport them to urban hospitals. Rivers that once sustained us are coated with crude oil. Gas flares burn day and night, releasing toxins that cause cancers and respiratory diseases. In any functioning democracy, such environmental devastation would provoke electoral punishment. But our people accept ten-thousand naira, wear party uniforms, and return the same leaders to office.
This pattern is not only morally wrong. It is strategically suicidal. The global energy transition is underway. The world is moving away from fossil fuels. In a few decades, crude oil will no longer be the primary driver of the global economy. When that happens, the Nigerian state’s willingness to distribute minor rents, amnesty stipends, and pipeline contracts will evaporate. If we remain politically domesticated and economically dependent, we will be discarded once our resources lose value. We will be left with a ruined environment and a population unprepared for the modern economy.
Breaking this cycle requires a radical transformation of our political behaviour. It requires both immediate reforms and long-term institution building.
First, we must refuse to sell our votes for temporary relief. If politicians bring money during elections, take it because it is a fraction of your stolen wealth, but enter the voting booth and vote fiercely against them if they have not delivered real, systemic progress. The act of taking money and voting against the giver is not a moral ideal. It is a pragmatic tactic that recognizes the reality of survival while asserting political agency.
Second, we must create a culture of community accountability. Any Ijaw politician, elder, or youth leader who sells out the collective interest for personal gain must face social consequences. They should be stripped of traditional honours, excluded from community gatherings, and greeted with public disapproval rather than celebration. The cost of betrayal must be made higher than the reward offered by external actors.
We must also institutionalize our collective strength. The Ijaw nation needs a permanent, non-partisan political and economic council composed of our finest minds. This council should include intellectuals, legal experts, economists, and community builders from across the globe. Its mandate would be to define a multi decade Ijaw National Agenda that transcends party lines. Any Ijaw person entering politics should be bound by that agenda. Any external political force seeking our cooperation should be required to commit to its verifiable execution.
Again, we must build strategic alliances with other coastal minority groups. From Calabar to Badagry, the coastal communities share common interests in environmental protection, maritime economies, and regional development. A unified coastal voting bloc would create a political force that no national party can ignore. Such an alliance would also strengthen bargaining power for federal resource allocation and environmental remediation.
Fifth, we must shift our economic focus from pipelines to the blue marine economy. Our future lies in the ocean. We must invest in community owned industrial fishing fleets, deep sea shipping logistics, local shipbuilding yards, and aquaculture networks. We must develop port infrastructure and maritime training centres. Economic independence is the foundation of political courage. When our communities can fund their own schools, hospitals, and water systems through independent marine enterprises, we will no longer beg for crumbs.
Sixth, we must invest in education and leadership training. Political courage is not loud rhetoric. It is disciplined strategy. We must train a new generation of leaders who understand constitutional law, public finance, environmental science, and international trade. We must teach negotiation skills, coalition building, and institutional design. The Ijaw struggle must be intellectualized and professionalized.
Seventh, we must reclaim our narrative. For too long our story has been told by others. We must document our history, our legal claims, and our environmental evidence. We must use the courts, the media, and international forums to hold polluters and complicit officials accountable. We must turn our lived experience into verifiable claims that can be litigated and publicized.
Finally, we must practice disciplined solidarity. Political unity does not mean uniformity of opinion. It means a shared commitment to core strategic objectives. It means agreeing on red lines that cannot be crossed. It means supporting candidates who commit to the Ijaw National Agenda and sanctioning those who betray it.
The hour is late. The cost of our political naivety is visible in every polluted river, every jobless youth, and every broken promise. We cannot enter another election cycle with the same broken playbook. We must reject transactional politics and demand structural change. We must hold our leaders accountable and refuse to celebrate personal appointments that bring no collective benefit.
We must heal ourselves of this political Stockholm syndrome. We must stop loving the systems that destroy us and begin the difficult work of building lasting political infrastructure. The future of the Ijaw nation depends on our ability to transform our pain into strategic power. The water is watching. The spirits of our ancestors who resisted colonial domination are watching. We must rise, cleanse our minds of dependency, and stand with dignity. The era of last minute surrender must end. The time for strategic, sovereign Ijaw political courage has arrived.
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