About Adaka Boro

The Life And Times Of Major Isaac J. Adaka Boro

In the book "The Twelve-day Revolution", Boro wrote about his early life:

He continued: "The next environment where I found myself was in my home town, Kaiama. My father had been sent there to head a school again."

He was many parts and different things to different people - a university students leader, a teacher, policeman and Nigerian Army Officer.

An undergraduate student of chemistry and student union president at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, he left school to lead an armed protest against exploration of oil and gas resources in the Niger Delta areas which benefited mainly the federal government of Nigeria and a remote Eastern Nigeria regional government. He believed that the people of the area deserved a fairer share of proceeds of the oil wealth. He formed the Niger Delta Volunteer Force, an armed militia with members constituting mainly of his fellow Ijaw ethnic group. They declared the Niger Delta Republic in February 23, 1966 and gallantly battled the Federal forces for twelve days but were finally routed by the far superior Federal fire-power. Boro and his compatroits were jailed for treason. However, the federal regime of General Yakubu Gowon granted him amnesty on the eve of the Nigerian civil war in May 1967. He then enlisted and was commissioned as a major in the Nigerian Army. He fought heroically on the side of the Federal Government but was killed (under mysterious circumstances) in active service in 1968 at Ogu (Okrika) in Rivers State of Nigeria, after successfully liberating the Niger Delta from the rebel Biafran Forces.

Later Niger Delta activists like the late Ken Saro-Wiwa, who substituted Boro's gun for a pen, and Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, who heads an Ijaw armed insurgency, often referred to him as a major inspiration.

- http://www.adakaboro.org