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How Not To Resolve The Niger Delta
Crises
By Uche Nworah
Author of The Long
Harmattan Season
Despite the army
of million dollar salary earning crises managers and PR
executives in the employment of the oil companies
operating in the oil-rich Niger Delta region of Nigeria,
It is still baffling that the oil companies did not see
the current crises coming. If they did, it is either
they underestimated the power and might of the Ijaws in
being able to take their destiny into their own hands,
or the shylock executives of Shell, Chevron, Agip, Exxon
Mobil, and the rest of the greedy foreign oil
exploration companies operating in the region have also
been heeding the counsel of false oracles.
Now the conflict
is threatening to spill out of proportions just like the
oil and flames spewing forth from the many burst oil
pipelines and wells scattered around the Niger Delta
region. The story and plight of the Ijaws as well as the
other indigenes of Nigeria’s oil producing communities
is not new to the world, but the world seemed to have
taken only a scathing and perfunctory notice when
Ken Saro-Wiwa
and eight members of his Movement for the Survival of
Ogoni People (MOSOP)
paid the ultimate price in 1995.
Perhaps Saro-Wiwa’s struggles and death should have been
a wake-up call for all who have been milking the cow to
death, and
feasting alongside the vultures
in the region of death but avarice appeared to have
taken the upper hand. The judgements of the Nigerian
governments starting from the federal and state
governments to the local governments were beclouded,
they refused to listen.
Of serious
concern is the way the Nigerian government have gone
about managing the crises, there has been an almost
befuddling passivity on its part with regards to the
Niger Delta crises. To think that the government has not
yet considered a constructive Marshal Plan to resolving
the crises which is threatening Nigeria’s chief source
of revenue, and which could potentially undermine the
current socio-economic reforms in place makes one to
wonder what the members of the federal executive council
discuss at their weekly meetings. While flagging off the
election campaign for the ruling Peoples Democratic
Party (PDP) in Port Harcourt recently, President
Obasanjo admitted the neglect of the region by
successive governments, according to him “Let
us say the truth; there had been neglect of this region
in the past. Neglect at the community, local, State and
Federal levels. There have been neglect at the oil
company levels, don’t let us deceive ourselves”. To the
disappointment of his listeners, there was no outline of
planned solutions and strategies towards a resolution.
From
pictures beamed around the globe by publications as
the
National Geographic and reports by organisations
such as the
‘Chop Fine report’ by
Human Rights Watch, one could easily see that the
Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta People
(MEND),
the Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force (NDPVF)
and the several other militia groups operating in the
region have a case, and they sure mean business. When
pictures of the balaclava clad, A-K 47 toting militia
men first emerged in 2005 alongside the pictures of the
first set of kidnapped oil workers, Nigerians and some
members of the international community scoffed at the
boys and rubbished their antics, some others simply went
about their business in the anticipation that it was a
one-off incident and ill wind that would eventually blow
away.
However, we are
now into the second year and the kidnappings rather than
abating have increased in intensity. The militia men
have become more daring serving the world media daily
doses of their kidnapping exploits. Lending his views to
the Niger Delta conflict, Sabella Ogbobode Abidde, a
prominent Ijaw indigene and Washington-based public
analyst called on all Nigerians especially Niger Deltans
to intensify their protests against the injustice in the
region, quoting Elie Wiesel, Mr Abidde said that “there
may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice,
but there must never be a time when we fail to protest”.
“The time to vigorously protest this blatant injustice
is now. The time has come” he concluded. Echoing similar
views, Victor Dike, author of
Democracy and Political
Life in Nigeria warned that
“without social justice there may be no peace in the
Niger Delta and economic growth and development will
continue to elude the region. He charged political
leaders to work harder for peace in the Niger Delta
because "without peace, growth is impossible."
The Nigerian
government attempted to contain the crises in 2006 when
it announced that the government would spend billions of
naira to construct bridges and flyovers across the Niger
Delta area. The announcement itself which is a warped PR
idea shows that the government is not fully in touch
with the realities on the ground in the Niger Delta
region. Although the government defended its decision by
claiming that the effort would help provide local jobs,
the announcement hardly addressed the
core issues
at the heart of the Niger Delta crises such as resource
control, poor living standards of the indigenes of the
oil producing communities, gas flaring, oil spillages
and other ecological disasters that have plagued the
region as a result of the activities of the oil
exploration companies. The Nigerian government’s
proposals to build bridges and flyovers across the Niger
delta region stems from a poverty of thought and have
not strategically addressed the core issues hence the
insurgencies and unrests in the region have not abated.
Perhaps this may
be a good time to either review the modus operandi or
scrap totally the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC).
Though set up with the best of intentions, the
organisation has however become a nesting ground for
corrupt government officials whose penchant for
diverting allocated funds meant for the development of
the Niger Delta region for personal use has meant that
the communities in question increasingly wonder where
the billions of naira the commission claims it has
invested in the region have gone to. The sleaze culture
in the commission was epitomised by its former chairman,
the exiled runaway and billionaire fugitive
Professor Eric Opia
who took the commission to the cleaners when it was
still known as the Oil Mineral Producing Areas
Development Commission (OMPADEC). Its immediate past and
current executives have also been known to be nursing
political ambitions, placed into context in a country
where candidates for governorship elections require
hundreds of millions of naira in campaign funding.
It may not be
difficult to fathom the sources of the electoral war
chests of the likes of Onyema Ugochukwu and Mr. Emmanuel
Aguariavwodo, both former managing directors of NDDC. Ugochukwu
is the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) gubernatorial
candidate in Abia state in the coming April/May general
elections, while Aguariavwodo, the immediate past
managing director resigned his appointment to vie for
PDP’s gubernatorial ticket in Delta state. The former
Executive Director, Finance and Administration of the
NDDC, Timi Alaibe has now been confirmed as the new
managing director taking over from Aguariavwodo, and
Alaibe is also known to be eyeing the government house
of oil-rich Bayelsa state, the home state of impeached
governor
D.S.P Alamiesegha.
The recent
comment credited to Nigeria’s Vice President Atiku
Abubakar is worrisome, he alleged that the Nigerian
government has placed orders for weapons and ammunitions
worth over $2 billion which it plans to use to quell the
Niger Delta insurgency. While accepting that the
statement should be cautiously received considering the
raging feud between President Obasanjo and the vice
president, it has to be said still that should this be
true, then it must be worrying news to all those who
have been following the Niger Delta crises.
The Obasanjo
government would be doing itself a disservice if it
proposes to use violence against its citizens because
memories of the
Odi
and
Zaki Biam
massacres are still fresh in the memories of Nigerians.
Such an approach will escalate violence in the region
because violence begets violence. The government should
still explore dialogue with all the stakeholders, an
option that it doesn’t seem to have considered very much
in the past. The Nigerian government should also
understudy America’s situation in Iraq before going
ahead with its proposals.
It is not always
the man with superior weapons that win wars. The Niger
Delta militia are at home in the creeks of the Niger
Delta and would not be easy prey for the federal troops
the government is planning to send into the region. The
government should think twice before embarking on this
road to perdition which spells doom for the innocent
citizens living in Niger Delta communities, the
militants and the federal troops that may be paying with
their lives fighting an unjust war just like US soldiers
in Iraq.
To the credit of
the Niger Delta militants, they have not embarked on
large scale execution of kidnapped oil workers most of
whom they eventually release except in exceptional
circumstances. The released oil workers have also come
out to their defence maintaining that they were well
treated while under captivity thus showing the human
side of the militants, a side that is amenable to
dialogue. It is this human side that the Nigerian
government should be exploring unless the Obasanjo
government wishes to add to its
catalogue of human rights abuses
and injustices against the Nigerian people.
The Long Harmattan Season
by the author is slated for release in March 2007.
February 2007.
info@uchenworah.com
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1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus
Created
By Charles C. Mann
I’m
a big fan of Charles Mann’s previous
book
1491:
New Revelations of the Americas Before
Columbus, in which he
provides a sweeping and provocative
examination of North and South America
prior to the arrival of Christopher
Columbus. It’s exhaustively researched
but so wonderfully written that it’s
anything but exhausting to read. With
his follow-up,
1493, Mann has taken it to a
new, truly global level. Building on the
groundbreaking work of Alfred Crosby
(author of
The Columbian Exchange and, I’m
proud to say, a fellow Nantucketer),
Mann has written nothing less than the
story of our world: how a planet of what
were once several autonomous continents
is quickly becoming a single,
“globalized” entity.
Mann not only talked to countless
scientists and researchers; he visited
the places he writes about, and as a
consequence, the book has a marvelously
wide-ranging yet personal feel as we
follow Mann from one far-flung corner of
the world to the next. And always, the
prose is masterful. In telling the
improbable story of how Spanish and
Chinese cultures collided in the
Philippines in the sixteenth century, he
takes us to the island of Mindoro whose
“southern coast consists of a number of
small bays, one next to another like
tooth marks in an apple.” We learn how
the spread of malaria, the potato,
tobacco, guano, rubber plants, and sugar
cane have disrupted and convulsed the
planet and will continue to do so until
we are finally living on one integrated
or at least close-to-integrated Earth.
Whether or not the human instigators of
all this remarkable change will survive
the process they helped to initiate more
than five hundred years ago remains,
Mann suggests in this monumental and
revelatory book, an open question. |
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Ratification
The People Debate the Constitution,
1787-1788
By Pauline Maier
A notable historian
of the early republic, Maier devoted a
decade to studying the immense
documentation of the ratification of the
Constitution. Scholars might approach
her book’s footnotes first, but history
fans who delve into her narrative will
meet delegates to the state conventions
whom most history books, absorbed with
the Founders, have relegated to
obscurity. Yet, prominent in their local
counties and towns, they influenced a
convention’s decision to accept or
reject the Constitution. Their
biographies and democratic credentials
emerge in Maier’s accounts of their
elections to a convention, the political
attitudes they carried to the conclave,
and their declamations from the floor.
The latter expressed opponents’
objections to provisions of the
Constitution, some of which seem
anachronistic (election regulation
raised hackles) and some of which are
thoroughly contemporary (the power to
tax individuals directly). Ripostes from
proponents, the Federalists, animate the
great detail Maier provides, as does her
recounting how one state convention’s
verdict affected another’s. Displaying
the grudging grassroots blessing the
Constitution originally received, Maier
eruditely yet accessibly revives a
neglected but critical passage in
American history.—Booklist |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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If you like this page consider making a donation
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
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1985
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____ 2005
Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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posted 6 February 2007
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