Varsity Don, Binebai Harps for Peace, Unity Among Warri Tribes

By Bulou Kosin, Warri

Professor Ben Binebai, Orator of Niger Delta University, Bayelsa State, has advised the three ethnic groups in Warri, namely the Itsekiri, Ijaw and Urhobo, to unite for progress of the area.

Binebai, a professor of drama, dramatic theory and criticism, gave the advise during a book launch, weekend, at the Petroleum Training Institute, Effurun-Warri, where he reviewed the book titled “Warri Federal Constituency Delineation: Itsekiri and the Challenge of Sustaining the Burden of Lies”, written by Monday Keme, an independent researcher, historian and prominent leader of Ogbe-Ijoh-Warri Kingdom.

Following discharge of his role as book reviewer, Binebai however said “the author in page 3 of the book establishes the fact under the title ‘Ethnic Inhabitants of the Warri Federal Constituency’ that “There are (3) ethnic nationalities in the constituency-Ijaw, Urhobo and Itsekiri”. In this context of shared ownership of Warri federal constituency,…it is only reasonable this entangled fate of geopolitical division becomes a powerful catalyst for peace and development for Warri”, adding: “It is high time they recognised this age-long inter-connectedness not only as a foundation for stability and prosperity but drive multicultural collaboration to shared pathway”.

The reviewer had earlier noted that Keme’s work “is an intertexual response to a book titled” INEC and Corrupt Practices: The Siames Twins and Warri Federal Constituency”, written by an Itsekiri. He explained that Keme’s “work offers a comprehensive portrait of a contested geopolitical constituency where land, identity, power, law, justice, truth and development collide”.

Stressing that Keme’s book is loaded with treaties signed under the British flag, court decrees and oral histories that balance competing claims of ownership, Binebai noted: “To sweep aside these testimonies in favour of an ethnocentric/single narrative is to let the tide of imperialist revisionism drown the voices that have long called the Warri Federal Constituency a home. It is to silence the Ijaw chants that rise from the creeks, to mute the Urhobo drums that beat on the hinterland not far from the riverbanks, and to erase the lived reality that the Itsekiri themselves came later to share the space with their neighbours for centuries”.

“As a matter of fact, M. Keme’s Book breaks the boundaries of a long held notion of the Itsekiri exclusive ownership of Warri and dismisses it to periperal shadows, it challenges the conventional notion of Warri ownership reality by questioning its dominant narratives, pushes limits, subverts expectations, presents new insights and deletes its dangerous fiction. The book raises and restores the suppressed voice of Ogbe-Ijoh”, Binebai asserted.

Calling for mutual respect and unity among the people of Warri, Binebai noted that Keme’s book is itself “a call, on our neighbours, to honour the shared heritage of the Warri constituency in question and to reject the imperialist erasure that would flatten a vibrant patchwork into a grey uniformity”.