Before he declared NIGER DELTA REPUBLIC, Isaac’s father Mr. Jasper Pepple Boro offered his son sponsorship abroad to further his education rather than take up arms against the government. He feared that the action would ruin the family.
Boro rejected his father’s offer. He explained that “The Ijaws were going into perpetual bondage; if we did not strike now, not only our families but also the entire Ijaws would be infernally chained.”
He made a prophetic address to the rebels before they struck:
“Today is a great day, not only in your lives, but also in the history of the Niger Delta. Perhaps, it will be the greatest day for a very long time. This is not because we are going to bring the heavens down, but because we are going to demonstrate to the world what and how we feel about oppression. Before today, we were branded robbers, bandits, terrorists or gangsters, but after today, we shall be heroes of our land”.
Major Isaac Jasper Adaka Boro, fondly called Boro, the anchor and patriarch of the Ijaw Nation and Niger Delta struggle was born on September 10, 1938 at Oloibiri in Ogbia Local Government Area of Bayelsa State, where oil was discovered in commercial quantities in Nigeria.
His father, Mr. Jasper Pepple Boro was then headmaster at the only mission primary school in Oloibiri.
He attended primary school at Oloibiri and thereafter preceded to Hussey College, in warri, Delta state, where he was once Senior Prefect and graduated in 1957.
At 20 in 1958, he taught briefly as Deputy Headmaster at St. Stephen's Primary school, Amassoma.
In 1959, before joining the Nigeria Police Force as Cadet Officer, he left the Police Force and pursued a degree course at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Anambra State.
An undergraduate student of chemistry and student union president at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, he left school to lead an armed protest against the exploitation of oil and gas resources in the Niger Delta areas which benefitted mainly the federal government of Nigeria and Eastern region with capital in Enugu and nothing was given to the Niger Delta people.
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 consisting mainly of his fellow Ijaw ethnic group.
They declared the Niger Delta Republic on February 23, 1966 and gallantly battled the Federal forces for twelve days but were finally routed by the far superior Federal firepower.
Boro and his compatriots were jailed for treason.
After the creation of Rivers State on May 27, 1967, and the eve of the civil war, Isaac Boro along with his lieutenants were released and granted amnesty by General Yakubu Gowon on August 4,1967.
Boro was enlisted and commissioned into the Nigeria Army as Second Lieutenant. Boro rose to the rank of a Major and served meritoriously in the battlefield where he eventually died in Ogu, near Okrika in Rivers state on May 16,1968 in the heat of battle after liberating the Niger Delta from the Biafran forces.
The Gowon administration hailed Boro as a Hero. He was buried in Ikoyi Cemetery, Lagos.
- Copied
