Asari Dokubo Biography: Age, Early Life, Education, Career, Family Marriage, Children & Net Worth

Alhaji Mujahid Asari Dokubo, formerly known as Melford Dokubo Goodhead Jr., is a businessman, activist and a major political figure of the Ijaw ethnic group in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria.

He was born on 1^st June, 1964, in Buguma, Rivers State into a middle class Christian family headed by a court judge and a housewife in Buguma, Rivers State, who also had four other children.

Asari is the founder of the Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force, one of the most significant armed groups in the Niger Delta region.

He is well-known for his anti-government attitude, which has made him popular among Niger Delta residents.

Some locals also regard Dokubo as a folk hero.

He was president of the Ijaw Youth Council for a time beginning in 2001 and later founded the Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force which would become one of the most prominent armed groups operating in the Niger Delta region. He is a Muslim with populist views and an anti-government stance that have made him a folk hero amongst certain members of the local population.

Asari Dokubo Education

After his elementary and secondary education in Port Harcourt, Asari opted to get a degree in Law from the University of Calabar before dropping out after three years in 1990, when he fell out with the school authority.

He then headed to the Rivers State University of Science and Technology. Similarly, Asari dropped out for the same reason.

After his elementary and secondary education, Asari opted to get a degree in Law from the University of Calabar before dropping out when he fell out with the school authority.

He then headed to the Rivers State University of Science and Technology. Similarly, Asari dropped out for the same reason.

Asari Dokubo Career/Activism

After dropping out of school, Asari converted to Islam and changed his name to Mujahid Dokubo-Asari to reflect this. He spent much of the 1990s attempting to become involved in regional politics, running for two offices in Rivers State in 1992 and 1998 but failing to win on either. Asari decided to join partisan politics leading him to contest for office on two unsuccessful trials in 1992 and 1998, respectively.

He then opted for activism, where he and some others founded the Ijaw Youth Council (IYC) in 1998 to advance the interests of the Niger Delta’s Ijaw ethnic community.

Asari as a founding member was appointed as the pioneer vice president of the organization.

The council’s primary goal is to underline long-standing Ijaw concerns about losing sovereignty over their homeland and their own lives to the Nigerian government and adjacent oil companies.

In 2001, he was elected president of the IYC and led the organization in pursuing an agenda of “Resource Control and Self-Determination by Any Means Necessary.”

The International Youth Council then launched ‘Operation Climate Change,’ in 1998 to campaign and fight peacefully for freedom, self-determination, and ecological justice.

The Nigerian government reacted swiftly by launching a crackdown on the organization.

In 2004, Asari established the Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force (NDPVF), which became a major source of conflict in the Delta region. The NDPVF, a militant organisation, was largely supported by local and regional politicians eager to profit handsomely from the region’s oil riches. The NDPVF quickly escalated an armed conflict with a rival group, known as the Niger Delta Vigilante (NDV), who were also seeking to control the Delta’s oil resources. Combat was concentrated primarily in Warri and subsequently, Nigeria’s oil capital Port Harcourt, as well as areas to the city’s southwest. Both groups engaged in oil ‘bunkering’ and other illegal forms of local resource extraction.

A change in political ideals by the NDPVF caused the group’s former sponsors to withdraw their financial support, and begin funneling funds to the rival NDV. Asari’s NDPVF then made a declaration of “all-out war” against the Nigerian state.

Although Asari has clearly stated that he does not align himself with any particular Biafra independence organization, he has appeared at events in the past with Ralph Uwazurike of MASSOB. He has also in various interviews praised Nnamdi Kanu of the Indigenous People of Biafra

Asari Dokubo Crisis and arrest

The threats to attack oil wells and pipelines by the NDPVF caused companies operating in the area to withdraw most of their personnel from the Delta, resulting in a massive drop in oil production of 30,000 barrels per day and pushing up the price of petroleum worldwide significantly. Due to the crisis this precipitated, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo called Asari and the leader of the NDV, Ateke Tom to Abuja for peace talks which were in large part a failure. After his refusal to endorse the legitimacy of the Olusegun Obasanjo government and due to his public support for self-determination of his native Ijaw people and independence for the Niger Delta.

Asari was charged in 2005 with treason during the Obasanjo government, but the charges were later dropped and Asari was released on bail on 14 June, 2007 to promote reconciliation which led to being granted amnesty, as part of new President Umaru Yar’Adua’s pledge to try and bring peace to the Niger Delta region.

As part of Yar’adua amnesty incentives to eliminate terrorist activities in the Niger Delta, the federal government awarded massive cash rewards to Asari and other terror leaders of the Niger Delta.

Asari received an annual cash payment of US$10 million a year from Abuja as part of the federal “pipeline security protection fee” to protect the Rivers State pipelines and creeks that the militants bombed, kidnapped and killed the workers and guards in the areas.

Asari Dokubo Marriage & Children

Asari Dokubo is married to Boma Dokubo and has four children

Amirah
Hassan
Hussain
Osama.

Asari Dokubo Net worth

Asari’s net worth is estimated at N622.5 million ($1.5m). He is one of the rich and famous political figures in Nigeria

Asari Dokubo Achievement

In 2013, Asari became a Benin Republic citizen and shifted his assets from Nigeria’s Niger Delta to Cotonou, where he erected multiple schools, colleges, and a university for the city’s school children and students.

Asari Dokubo Controversy

In October 2022, Asari Dokubo was seen in a viral video with an AK 47 rifle threatening to unleash mayhem on the supporters of Mr Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party.

In the video, Asari pledges his support for the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Bola Tinubu.

“Obi is going nowhere. This your Obi movement is a joke. Presenting Obi as a candidate is what any rational human being should not even think about. Presenting Obi as a candidate, a man who failed in Anambra. Nothing to show for in Anambra and that is the best Igbos can present.

“I feel sorry for Igbos. Anybody who talks you abuse them…you can’t abuse me. You can’t do me anything. If you come I go pursue you. Me na Tinubu I dey o. Na Tinubu go win this election o. Obi self no go carry third. I be coward? I dey here.”. He said in the video