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Alhaji Mujahid Dokubo-Asari,
known simply as Dokubo-Asari, is an Ijaw leader. He was born Melford Dokubo Goodhead Junior, to a high court judge and a housewife. He is
the first of six children and had a middle-class upbringing in a Christian
home. He had his primary and secondary education in Port Harcourt, the
Rivers State capital, and was described as a respectful child
- more ..
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Personality and Ideologies
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 Profile
of Mujahid Dokubo-Asari,
the leader of
an armed group demanding more control of oil resources for the ethnic Ijaws,
who are the biggest group in Nigeria's oil-producing region, the Niger
Delta. |
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Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, known simply as Asari, is
a 41-year-old Ijaw youth leader. He was born Melford Dokubo
Goodhead Junior, to a high court judge and a housewife. He is the first of
six children and had a middle-class upbringing in a Christian home. He
had his primary and secondary education in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State
capital, and was described as a respectful child. Asari gained admission to
study law in the University of Calabar, but dropped out in his third year in
1988 after repeated clashes with school authorities. He abandoned a second
attempt to earn a degree in law at the Rivers State University of Science and Technology due
again to his activism. It was about this period that he
converted to Islam and adopted the name Mujahid Dokubo-Asari. In 1992, Asari
attempted to get elected into the Rivers State House of Assembly but failed.
In 1998, he sought to be elected as the chairman of Asari-Toru local
government area but lost again. Asari was a founding member of the Ijaw
Youths Council, IYC, becoming its first vice-president in 1999.
On the 11th of December, 1998, the IYC issued the
"Kaiama Declaration", demanding control of the oil resources from the Niger
Delta by the people of the Niger Delta.
There was an immediate crackdown on the body by the
military junta that then ruled Nigeria.
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Asari became President of the IYC in 2001 and
immediately changed the slogan of the body to "Resource Control and Self
Determination By Every Means Necessary", signaling his readiness to do
battle with the Nigerian state.
He condemned the 2003 elections, won by President
Olusegun Obasanjo, as a fraud in full-page newspaper adverts, and promptly
fell out with the governor of Rivers State.
Early this year, Asari took to the mangrove swamps of
the Niger Delta and built up his now famous Niger Delta People's Volunteer
Force. He launched a damaging military and propaganda war against the state
and federal governments and those he described as their agents,
prompting the government to initiate full-scale
military operations against him. Even as he continued to fight against the
government, Asari called for the convocation of a Sovereign National
Conference to discuss the place of the Ijaw people in the country. His
recent threat to blow up oil facilities in the Niger Delta forced the
government to open up negotiations with him. Asari is a burly man of 5 feet
10 inches (1.78m). He is soft-spoken and an easy-going person who is
passionate about his convictions, especially, on matters he views as
injustice. He is given to fits of anger. He has no criminal record and is
known to have been called upon by the police to help them out in difficult
situations. Mujahid Dokubo-Asari is an avaricious reader who loves to visit
friends to discuss issues. He leads a strict Muslim life and until recently
moved about without guards. He is married to two wives and has six children.
This profile is done by Journalist
Ebimo Amungo
From Argus Newspaper ,
Port Harcourt
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