President of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), Mr. Legborsi Saro Pyagbara, has emerged the Africa Coordinator of the International Indigenous Peoples’ Movement for Self-Determination and Liberation (IPMSDL). He was unanimously endorsed for the position during the Africa Regional Conference of IPMSDL held last weekend in Nairobi, Kenya, which drew participation from over 40 countries in Africa and Asia.

Pyagbara’s victory by extension won Nigeria the right to host the African Regional Secretariat of IPMSDL.

The Ogoni delegation to the conference led by the MOSOP President included Dr. Young Nkpah, President, the National Youth Council of the Ogoni People (NYCOP), and Comrade Celestine Akpobari, Coordinator, Ogoni Solidarity Forum (OSF) Nigeria.

The conference was held to determine the different approaches to enhancing the self-determination struggles of Indigenous Peoples on the continent of Africa. The adoption of Mr. Pyagbara came after his thought provoking and emotional presentation on the topic, ‘Indigenous Peoples, the international human rights system and the quest for self-determination’ in which he identified that most African Indigenous peoples are under a second wave of colonisation which is engendered and sustained by dominant ethnic nationalities in the respective African countries. The MOSOP leader had opined that resource-rich Indigenous communities across the continent are at cross-roads now because of the cut-throat capitalist competition between the west led by USA and its allies and the East led by China and India in a new wave of economic slavery that must be resisted at all costs.

During the discussion on building a viable structure and leadership for the Movement in Africa, several commentators, including Comrade Xukuri Xukuri from the San People of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana, had raised the point for establishing a clear leadership framework on the continent including calling for nominations. In his contributions and motion for the nomination of the President of MOSOP, Comrade Celestine Akpobari had remarked that the MOSOP President had over two-decade experience on Indigenous issues and MOSOP is one of the most renowned organisation in Africa, stressing that it was the contributions of the leader of MOSOP and his networks and reach within the Indigenous peoples constituency within Africa that had ensured the success of the retreat.

In his motion of support for the nomination, Mr. Daniel Kobei of the Kenyan-based Ogiek Peoples Development Program (OPDP) had stated that Mr. Saro Legborsi Pyagbara is well-rooted amongst Indigenous peoples on the African continent and had discharged his responsibilities well in other callings where he had represented the continent such as the Indigenous Peoples Focal Point, Climate Investment Funds, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the Chairmanship of the United Nations Voluntary Fund for Indigenous Peoples (UNVFIP). The MOSOP President, he emphasised, is also currently serving as a member of the Steering Committee of IPMSDL and the Indigenous Peoples alternate representative of IPMSDL on the International Coordinating Committee (ICC) of the CSO Partnership for Development Effectiveness (CPDE).

Based on these, the conferees unanimously adopted the MOSOP leader as the Africa Coordinator of the Movement without any dissent becoming the first African Indigenous person to occupy the position in the process.

MOSOP has congratulated Mr. Pyagbara, with the Publicity Secretary, Mr. Fegalo Nsuke, describing his emergence as IPMSDL Africa Coordinator as being well deserved.

IPMSDL is a movement of grassroots-based indigenous peoples organisations, communities and advocates found in different parts of the world, who are struggling to defend the rights of indigenous peoples to self-determination, against displacement from ancestral lands and territories, destructive development projects that deprive Indigenous peoples or degrade their resources, cultures and environment, oppression and repression by the state and its agents including colonisation and subjugation by imperialist globalisation.

•Photo shows IPMSDL Africa Coordinator, Legborsi Saro Pyagbara.

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