A new book by community leader, Chief Monday Keme, has intensified controversy over the Warri Federal Constituency, reopening old fault lines and fuelling fresh debate over the Implementation of a landmark Supreme Court judgement on electoral delineation.

The 108-page book, Warri Federal Constituency Delineation: Itsekiri and the Challenge of Sustaining the Burden of Lies, is a rebuttal to INEC and Corrupt Practices: The Siamese Twins and Warri Federal Constituency by Robinson Ariyo Esq. and Jolone Ikomi, Esq., which Keme supported by the Niger Delta Scholars, accused of advancing a distorted and ethnocentric narrative of Warri’s political history.

Reviewed by Professor Benedict Binebai Ebimotimi, at the weekend, at the PTI Conference Centre, Effurun in Delta state, the book is described as an “intertextual” response to the earlier publication, confronting its claims with court judgements, colonial records, gazettes, traditional edicts and oral histories.

According to the reviewer, the work argued that Warri Federal Constituency is a shared geopolitical space of Ijaw, Itsekiri and Urhobo people, and that claims of exclusive ownership by any single group collapsed under legal and historical scrutiny.

A stakeholder, Hon Friday Dengha, who spoke in place of the Chairman and Ijaw National Congress President, Prof. Benjamin Okaba, said the occasion was “to correct impressions already made. If a lie is perpetually told, it would be assumed to be true. The purpose is to straighten the minds of the young ones who would make analysis.”

Speaking on the sidelines of the book’s presentation, Keme who is the Principal Secretary to HRM Monbene III, the Amakosu of Ogbe-Ijoh Warri Kingdom, said the work was prompted by recent developments following the Supreme Court judgement that ordered a fresh delineation of electoral wards and polling units in Warri South, Warri South-West and Warri North Local Government Areas which was carried out in July 2024, with the field report presented to stakeholders on April 4, 2025.

He stressed that his intervention was grounded in decades of scholarship, stating: “I have spent about 40 years as a documentary scholar and made my first publication about Warri 20 years ago. So if I am speaking on the Warri issue, I am speaking from a very sound intellectual background.”

Keme maintained that the Supreme Court judgement was delivered on December 2, 2022, in an appeal brought by Hon. George Timini and nine others against INEC, left no room for ambiguity.

According to him, the controversy of the past months stemmed from attempts to reinterpret or delay the clear outcome of that ruling.

“The Supreme Court resolved the issues against the appellants and went further to make a consequential order directing INEC to carry out fresh delineation in all the electoral wards and polling units in Warri South, Warri South-West and Warri North for the purpose of future elections.

“I have followed events as they unfold, and I have watched with dismay. In the given circumstance, I cannot stand aloof. I had to put the facts in proper perspective for those who wish to know the truth about Warri Federal Constituency. That is the spirit behind this book,” Keme said.

The author criticised the resistance to the delineation exercise, noting that the Warri local governments occupy a unique place in Nigeria’s electoral history.

“Out of the 774 local government areas in Nigeria, the three Warri LGAs happened to be the first that were democratically delineated. What existed before was inherited from a military system—wards and polling units created by military fiat. This is the first real opportunity for democratic delineation, and anybody who is against it does not mean well for the people,” Keme stated.

He called on authorities to maintain neutrality and support INEC in completing the process, describing delineation as a foundational step in democratic practice. (The Nation, excluding headline)

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