INEC delineation exercise: Urhobos protest exclusion from meeting with NSA

Ahead of Monday meeting with the National Security Adviser, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu over the protest arising from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) delineation of Wards in Warri South, the Urhobos of Warri South Local Government Area of Delta State, have petitioned to the office of the NSA over their exclusion.

In a letter dated May 15 2025, jointly signed by Chief Westham Adehor and Hon. Mark Ikpuri, they faulted their exclusion from the meeting.

The duo asked that they be “granted audience to be part of the meeting for proper representation of

our people.”

The letter read in part: “We, the undersigned Urhobos of Warri South Local Government Area of Delta State, write

to protest our exclusion from the scheduled meeting with the National Security Adviser on the contentious INEC delineation exercise. We have been the ones representing the

Urhobos of Warri South in all the stakeholder meetings on the invitation of INEC but since the proposed field report came out from INEC, we found out that it does not reflect the

true pictures/position of what was captured in the Urhobo axis.

“We wrote series of letters to INEC to state our position, that the ljaws are not part of Warri South Local Government Area of Delta State and the area captured by INEC are Agbarha

area.

“Since our publication on Vanguard, Friday 2nd May 2025 to INEC titled; Joint Press Conference by the Ijaws and Urhobos of Warri on the report of the Field Work on the fresh delineation of Electoral Wards and Polling Units and threats to peace and security in Warri Federal Constituency of Delta State in April 30, 2025, we were surprised that, we were excluded

from the stakeholders meeting called by the office of the NSA dated the 19th day of May 2025.

“We chose to be granted audience to be part of this meeting for proper representation of

our people.”