SPLM-IO commissioner calls for cross-tribal alliance against Kiir’s ‘oppressive’ regime

AKOBO – A newly appointed opposition official in South Sudan’s volatile Jonglei State has called for a broad cross-tribal alliance against the government, urging supporters to reject ethnic divisions even as observers warn of rising tribal mobilization across the region.

John Wiyual Lul, who was appointed last week as the commissioner of Akobo County by Nathaniel Oyet, the acting leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement in Opposition (SPLM-IO), addressed a large crowd at the county headquarters in Akobo on Thursday.

In his first major public address since taking office, Wiyual sought to reframe the conflict as a political struggle rather than a continuation of the ethnic animosity that has plagued the country since 2013.

“The war we are fighting is not a war against the Dinka community. We are fighting a government that has oppressed the citizens for many years,” Wiyual told the gathering.

He emphasized that the opposition’s grievances were shared by members of President Salva Kiir’s own Dinka ethnic group, many of whom he said were “fighting in the battlefield” and on social media against the regime because “they are not happy within the government.”

The commissioner’s appeal for unity comes amid growing alarm among international observers and rights groups regarding the resurgence of ethnic-based recruitment.

Both the government and opposition commanders in Jonglei and Upper Nile states have been mobilizing youth militias along tribal lines in recent weeks, raising fears of a return to the large-scale communal violence that characterized the early years of the civil war.

Wiyual, however, insisted that the root cause of the violence was the government’s failure to deliver the dividends of independence.

He painted a bleak picture of the country’s development since it split from Sudan in 2011, arguing that the administration in Juba had failed to provide basic services as promised by the 21-year liberation struggle against (northern) Sudan.

“Our country doesn’t look like an independent country now… There are no schools. There are no roads. There are no hospitals,” Wiyual said, drawing applause from the crowd.

He added that citizens lacked clean drinking water and food, while the army had gone unpaid for years.

“People are dying overnight, and people are killing each other,” he said, attributing the instability to state failure rather than communal hatred.

Akobo, located near the Ethiopian border, has historically been a stronghold for the SPLM-IO and a center of the group’s resistance. Wiyual’s appointment by Oyet is seen by analysts as a move to consolidate political control in the area as military tensions with Juba escalate.