Lower Niger Congress – USA (LNC-USA) is the Diaspora extension of the Self-determination movement for the indigenous peoples of the Lower Niger in Nigeria.
LNC – USA is a District of Columbia-registered nonprofit corporation created by certain members of the US Nigerian Diaspora population as the face of the Lower Niger Congress (LNC) in the United States, in particular and entire North America, in general. LNC is a social activist organization whose primary focus is to facilitate the speedy actualization of the unquenchable desire by the indigenous peoples of the Lower Niger to assert their inalienable right to determine their own fate, by themselves, in their own ancestral domain consistent with the 2007 Unite Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). LNC-USA serves the interests of millions of indigenes of the Lower Niger who are domiciled in the North American Diaspora and also projects the positive image and agenda of the LNC to the whole world, particularly the United States, Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean.
Our Goals and Objectives
1. Profess, articulate and project the principles of self-determination, as enunciated by UNDRIP, which is the raison d’être of the LNC.
2. Provide the operational platform through which millions of indigenous peoples of the Lower Niger domiciled in the North American Diaspora can enlighten their kith and kin living inside Nigeria in the revival of authentic African cultural pride, democratic governance, social justice, respect for law and due process as well as in reinforcing their reliance on education and hard work as the veritable pathway to attaining economic prosperity and development.
3. Act as the lead instrument for mobilizing material and diplomatic support for the LNC and all its operations throughout North America and the Caribbean basin.
The Lower Niger encompasses the Niger River delta and the contiguous landmass that straddles this big African inland waterway as it empties into the Atlantic Ocean. Containing the delta of a mighty river system, the Lower Niger is naturally blessed with rich and highly productive agricultural lands as well as an abundance of freshwater supply. The land space is populated by ethno-political and cultural groups which have co-habited same territory for millennia in relative peace, tolerance and mutual respect for each other. The Lower Niger also coincides with the epicenter of crude petroleum deposits whose exploitation, within the past 50 years, has propelled the Nigerian domestic economy to become Africa’s largest.
All its many rich natural endowments notwithstanding, the indigenous peoples of the Lower Niger comprise the most socioeconomically deprived and politically marginalized citizens of contemporary Nigeria. The territory lacks necessary economic infrastructural development, industrial manufacture, societal amenities etc despite the fact that the Lower Niger has been the goose which has laid the metaphorical golden eggs for Nigeria in the last half a century. Since conclusion of the 30-month Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970), Nigeria’s official policies have relegated the Lower Niger to an economic wasteland with near-total absence of maritime commerce beyond the export of crude petroleum products.
Due to lack of adequate oversight, the multinational oil companies operating throughout the Lower Niger and associated coastal waters have despoiled and desecrated the indigenous peoples’ ancestral lands and living space through massive and widespread pollution of the environment by daily oil spills and gas flaring. Agricultural and residential lands in the hinterland are devastated by the combined scourges of widespread deforestation and resultant top-soil and gully erosion. Gross environmental mismanagement and decay impede/retard the Lower Niger’s progress.
Prompt implementation of the aims and objectives of LNC-USA shall, hopefully, enable indigenous peoples of the Lower Niger to cope with and overcome their compounded existential problems, summarized above, through its enlightenment campaigns among the target population. Most important, manpower and material resources shall be identified, sought after and mobilized from indigenes of the Lower Niger in the American Diaspora and channeled toward mitigating the social, political, economic and environmental quandary which combine to retard the deserved advancement of the target population within Nigeria, in particular and elsewhere nationwide, in general.
Our mission is to promote and foster self-determination of the indigenous peoples of the Lower Niger area in present day Nigeria, in particular and among ethnic nationalities which inhabit other parts of the colonial creation that metamorphosed to become the Nigerian state of today.
