The president of the pan-Ijaw socio-cultural organisation, Ijaw National Congress, INC, Tari Sekibo is dead.

Sekibo, aged 70, reportedly slumped on Monday and was rushed to the Federal Medical Centre, FMC, Yenagoa, the Bayelsa State capital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.

The late INC President, who hailed from Okrika in Rivers State, was a Second Republic senator (1979-1983) and was in Yenagoa for a meeting with other INC officials when he died.

His corpse has since been deposited at the morgue of the FMC, Yenagoa.

In his reaction to the death, an Ijaw leader, Thompson Okorotie, said he received the news of the death of Mr. Sekibo with great shock and disbelief.

Okorotie, a former lawmaker in the old Rivers State House of Assembly during the Second Republic, described the deceased as an accomplished Ijaw nationalist.

“The news of the death of Chief Sekibo came as a great shock to me. He was an accomplished person, a distinguished Senator of the Second Republic and traditional ruler in Okrika.

“He was a man that had lived a fine life. We knew he was going to give a responsible leadership to the Ijaw National Congress, when we elected him during the INC convention held last May,” he said.

The publicity secretary of the INC, Victor Burubo, confirmed the death.

“We have just heard the news that we have lost our President. We don’t have enough details but he died in Yenagoa. We are arranging to move to Yenagoa and get enough details on the sad incident,” he said.