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Bala, Ogoni and the Niger Delta By BALA Usman is a controversial intellectual. He has consistently sought to establish a link between history and contemporary Nigerian politics. Many a time he has deliberately forged a radically revisionist historiography in the attempt to make a case for northern hegemony. At other times he raised valid and important historical issues that either have been ignored or taken for granted to the detriment of our nation-state project.
The controversy he generated a few months ago was particularly bad for the Ahmadu Bello University historian. His short paper, "Ignorance, Knowledge and Democracy in Politics in Nigeria" together with its more elaborate version published by CEDDERT, have raised a titanic storm that has tended to drown the author in an ocean of red ink. Professor Peter Ekeh in a compelling argument, accused Bala of intellectual mischief (The Guardian, May 7, 2001). In a measured riposte, G.G. Darah was less concerned with the intellectual issue than with the questioning of Usman's radical and pan-Nigerian credential (The Guardian, May 14,15&16). Others have also responded, including Chris Akiri who sought to reassert the historical roots of the Urhobo nation (The Guardian, May 21&22).
Bala Usman's central thesis in the two publication has been developed years ago. We need to go back to 1996 when apparently this theory was first tested on a national audience. That was his marathon Vanguard Newspapers lecture which he titled "Understanding Nigerian Economy and Polity". (The Punch April 12, 15, 16 May 7, 1996). For a better appreciation of Usman's position, all the aforementioned essays of his have to be taken together in context. Among other things, the controversial thesis posits that Nigeria groups, in pre-colonial times, did not individually constitute the ethnic blocs sharing a common aspiration as we know them today; they did not form homogenous political communities expressed in statehood, neither did they share a sense of collective nationhood. Rather, Usman emphasises further, it was British conquest and the subsequent imposition of the colonial state that forged that sense of nationhood and common identity among the individual groups.
By such disingenuous argument, Bala Usman intends to destroy the historical legitimacy of the current movement for political restructuring and resource control that has been engendered by internal colonialism in the country and the consequent gale of ethnic nationalism. Since none of these groups formed states or political entitle that embraced all sections of the group, Bala argues, there is no basis for the agitation for confederation or ethnic autonomy as these groups cannot legitimately constitute the confederating or autonomous units or sovereign entities.
To quote Bala Usman in his 1996 lecture: "The kingdoms, chiefdoms, city-states and village confederations which the British conquered were not sovereign ethnic political blocs which can now be brought back into existence if Nigeria is dismembered, or which can provide the basis of political entities out of which a Nigerian confederation or commonwealth of independent states can be created. There was no Hausa-Fulani, Yoruba, Kataf, Sayawa, Tiv, Baju, Jukun, Ogoni, Chamba, Ijaw, Itsekiri or Urhobo polity or sets of polities, which can be resurrected to constitute the component units of a confederation, or to stand on their own as independent states, if the Nigerian polity is loosened or dismembered." This is a powerful argument.
What appeared to be the author's attacks on the various ethnic communities in the south, especially those in the vanguard for restructuring and resource control are barely attempts to corroborate this contentious thesis. The attacks could as well have been dictated by prevailing political trends. It does not seem a mere coincidence, therefore, that the Urhobo and Yoruba who are currently some of the most articulate proponents of restructuring and resource control are carefully singled out for intellectual punishment by Bala Usman. G.G Darah of The Guardian receives more than a fare share of pen whipping for daring to suggest that the Urhobo nation has 6,000 years of history.
In 1996, at the height of Nigeria's international isolation engendered largely by the pioneering Ogoni struggle, particularly the Abacha regime's execution of Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni activists, it was the turn of the Ogoni to receive Bala Usman's scorching attack. "Claims of ethnic cohesion made nowadays about the 'Ogoni Nation' are simply politically convenient misrepresentations of a different and complex reality. This reality includes the fact that there have never been any entity known as Ogoni outside colonial and independent Nigeria," Bala Usman pontifically proclaimed. "The different village groups which the British conquered were inhabited by people speaking four different languages. Some of these villages were autonomous and others were under the control of assertive Niger Delta polities like Opobo and Obolo. No entity known as 'Ogoni' existed right up to British conquest".
Bala Usman was not done yet with the Ogoni. He was spoiling for an overkill as he stated further that: "The pre-mid 19th century Ogoni society is a figment of Saro-Wiwa's fertile imaginations; like the Ogoni nation is a politically convenient fabrication, without any reality outside MOSOP's Inkatha-type politics. There is no evidence that the six or so polities that existed in that area in the first half of the 19th century constituted a distinct entity, regarded themselves as related or as "Ogoni".
The problem is Bala Usman seems to have located political centralization or "political community" as he calls it, as the only or main form of identity that bound together individual pre-colonial groups to create a sense of identity and common destiny. If there was no formal state structure encompassing a whole group then there was no common identity binding the group, necessitating collective action. It is like resurrecting the discarded historiographical debate about state formation in sub-Saharan African, a debate which tended to see the formation of states or political centralization as the very definition of civilization. Centralized polities were the ideal. The non-centralized or so-called acephalous societies represented the rudimentary stage of civilization. In the attempt to conform to contemporary intellectual correctness, states, kingdoms and empires were invented where something else existed. Today, we have learned to live with the reality that non-centralized societies had their own dynamics which ensured their survival and progress and that they were not more backward than the centralized polities.
The point we have to emphasise about Bala Usman's theory is that historical evidence is at variance with the position that a common identity expressed in the form of a sense of community and collective aspiration among the various groups in Nigeria is a colonial creation. On the contrary, such collective sentiment or common ties binding ethnic communities long antedate the coming of Europeans. Such identity need not necessarily have expressed itself in the formation of a political community or state. Nor was there an opportunity for its collective articulation in any other form since the objective historical conditions for the concrete expression of such all-embracing ethnic identity or nationhood had not yet materialised. Colonialism provided that opportunity as we shall see presently.
Historically, war or external aggression provided a chance for the demonstration of group or national solidarity. But hardly was a whole group or collectivity threatened nor did the whole group go to war against a common external enemy. It was usually a section of the group such as particular villages or group of villages or clan, in which case other villages or section of the group would rise to the defence of the threatened section. It is superfluous going into the history of the individual groups as some of those who have responded to Usman have demonstrated the weakness of his thesis in respect of certain groups. There was no Yoruba state encompassing all Yoruba as Usman has correctly stated, but there was definitely a Yoruba ethnic identity embracing all Yoruba. In this sense the Yoruba constituted an ethnic bloc before European incursion. Same applied to the Tiv, the Ogoni, the Urhobo, the Jukun, the Hausa before their intermingling with the immigrant Fulani, etc.
What colonialism did was to provide the objective conditions by creating the political and territorial space in the form of a multi-national or multi-ethnic Nigerian state which ensured the hardening, deepening and enlargement of the existing feeling of ethnic community or nationhood among the constituent groups. The development of modern communication, especially roads, was also an important facilitating factor in this development. The competition, right from the beginning, assumed basically an ethnic character, consummating in recent years in the ascendancy of virulent and often militant and exclusive ethnic nationalism. Colonialism did not initiate this process of nationhood formation among the groups as Bala Usman has claimed. It rather provided space for the expression of an existing pre-colonial phenomenon.
We should not here be concerned with why the competition over power and resource allocation did not take some modern form other than ethnicity. We, nevertheless, have to make the quick observation that other forms of mobilizing solidarity such as class were rather sophisticated, requiring as they were particular levels of social development of society. But ethnicity is primordial, it is crude. The sentiment is always there and, therefore, provides the easiest and perhaps cheapest way of mobilizing a people.
The political conclusion which can be drawn from this analysis is this: contrary to Bala Usman, there is in Nigeria the historical basis for confederation or any other democratic alternative to the hegemonic and centralised state structure of the military creation. One may not necessarily be sympathetic to an ethnic confederation nor is one certain that the Nigerians actually want a dismemberment of the polity. But such personal position hardly undermines the reality that the current "ethnic nations" can legitimately constitute the component units of a confederation or form autonomous political entities. Many of them are even larger and more cohesive than several sovereign states in the world today.
THE first point calls for a thorough analysis of the process by which the various groups were brought under colonial rule. This is rather complicated history, which has been rendered simplistic by the notion of a general conquest by the British. The British imposed their rule on the Niger Delta by fraud and treachery. Many of the chiefdoms, city states, kingdoms and autonomous communities of the Niger Delta had, following the Berlin Treaty of 1885, were cajoled into signing a so-called treaty of protection and friendship with British agents.
These treaties were in two categories those in three clauses and those in nine clauses. The treaties did not take away the sovereignty of the Niger Delta entities involved. Rather they were designed to protect that sovereignty against violation by other European powers as a means of safeguarding British commercial interest in the region. The three-clause treaty mainly forbade African signatories from entering into any treaty with any other foreign power. The nine-clause treaty included freedom of trade and religion. It also placed jurisdiction over European subjects under British consular authority, very much the same way embassies and High Commissions function in the contemporary world. Article VIII specifically demanded from African kings and chiefs reciprocal protection for European property and vessels wreaked within their territories. Britain, however, was to use these seemingly innocuous treaties between sovereign equals as the basis for the annexation of the signatory states.
There was another category of autonomous entities, which refused to sign any treaty of protection and had to resist the imposition of British rule by force of arms. The Ogoni is one of such groups. Having declared a protectorate over the Ogoni country at Kono Beach in March 1901, the British proceeded to subjugate Ogoni to British rule. Realising what, to all intents and purposes, had become the loss of their sovereignty, the Ogoni rose up in arms later in 1901, 1905 and 1907. The Gbenebeka deity became the rallying point for the resistance movement. The struggle culminated in the epic Battle of Deeyor in 1908 between British-led forces commanded by one Lt. Rose and the Gokana. After two days of battles the Ogoni fighters ran short of munitions and retreated. They neither surrendered nor signed any document formally ending the war. The British were later to acknowledge the heroism of Ogoni warriors. Following further uprising the Gbenebeka shrine at Gwara was in 1914 eventually burnt down by a military escort under the command of one Major G H Walker.
The people who fought for the creation of Rivers State had based their demand on these facts of history. The Rivers State they were fighting for was not the type created in 1967 by the General Yakubu Gowon. Rather it was supposed to be an autonomous Rivers State that would reflect the words and spirit of the treaties signed with Rivers kings and chiefs. In a petition to this effect sent to the British Government in 1956, the Conference of Rivers Chiefs and people stated that: "By the terms of those instruments neither her majesty the queen nor our forebears, both parties to those Treaties, had any the least intention that our Rivers country, our markets and out entire territory should be ruled by a Government which has its headquarters at Enugu or Ibadan or Lagos."
It is northern Nigeria that provides us with a clear picture of a conquered domain. The Sultan, Attahiru Amadu had in 1902 sent Lugard a letter which Lugard, rightly or wrongly, saw as a declaration of war against Britain. The Sultan had fled by the time Lugard entered Sokoto with his forces. At the command of Lugard a new Sultan was appointed in 1903. Lugard minced no words in instructing the new Sultan, Muhammadu Attahiru about the new status of the caliphate, which now passed under British rule by right of conquest: "The Fulani in old times under Dan Fodio conquered this country. They took the right to rule over it, to levy taxes, to depose kings and to create kings. They in turn have by defeat lost their rule which has come into the hands of the British. All these things which I have said the Fulani by conquest took the right to do now passed to the British (Crowder, 1978:1984).
One can see the clear difference between the incorporation of Northern Nigeria, where British forces marched victoriously from emirate to emirate and from chiefdom to chiefdom and that of the Niger Delta where incorporation in most cases was by treaty. Which of these two parts should actually lose its resources to the successor Nigerians state? In his 1996 paper, Bala Usman probably thought he was slaying the beast of resource control by pontificating that colonial laws vested ownership of all lands and other natural resources in the British, not the natives. This was a veiled justification of the 1978 Land Use Act which resource control advocates see as one of the greatest acts of unjust expropriation perpetrated by the Nigeria state.
Here again, Usman was treading on a slippery historical ground that required great care not to stumble. The land question was one of the difficult problems the British had to cope with in Nigeria. And till their departure in 1960 they never solved the problem and never made any pretence about it. The overriding considerations by the colonial regime in respect of land were: one , to find a way of overcoming the existing communal tenure system to ensure the security of tenure to promote agriculture and general development. Second, to prevent large-scale expropriation of native land by Europeans to prevent landlessness and the kind of social problems created by European land grabbing in places like South Africa and Kenya. Two principles were therefore applied, one in the South and the other in the North.
In the North, the colonial administration acting under the influence of a certain influential Resident scuttled Lugard's plan of creating a landlord class by a system of private agricultural estates owned by the aristocracy and worked by former slaves. As Lugard went on transfer to Hong Kong, his former subordinates in the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria, engineered land nationalisation which forbade private ownership of land, backing it up with the Land and Native Rights Ordinance. That the Islamic north was the custodian of all lands throughout the areas of jurisdiction of the disbanded Sokoto Caliphate. The legal argument was that the British Crown assumed this land control by right of conquests. The issue is well treated in chapter three of Robert Shenton's book, The Development of Capitalism in Northern Nigeria (University of Toronto Press, 1986)
In the Southern Provinces, the matter was fundamentally different. The legal opinion was that lands were ineffective indigenous occupation at the time of the introduction of British rule and were for the most part acquired by voluntary cessions and not by right of conquest: One need to refer to the late luminary, Taslim Elias in his book, Nigerian Land Law and Custom (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul 1960, pg.45). ..."Running through the entire web of legislation concerning land in the old protectorate of Southern Nigeria, from the proclamation of the protectorate onwards, has been the one consistent principle that the right of the Crown, has at least in practice, been confined to an administrative control over the alienation of land by natives to non-natives, the customary use and enjoyment of the land being reserved to the native occupiers." This position is solidly demonstrated in HL Ward Price's original study of land tenure in the Yoruba Provinces (1933) and MM Green's Land Tenure in an Ibo village (1944). In fact, nowhere in these studies did the colonial authorities meddle in land maters beyond administrative supervision and adjudication in the law courts in case of land dispute. If land was considered to be the domain of the indigenous southerners and if by treaty the Niger Delta, Delta communities are at least in theory sovereign entities, where then is the historical legitimacy for the Land Use Act?
In respect of minerals, one can hardly controvert the fact that the colonial government expropriated indigenous rights, vesting control in the crown. This policy the Nigerian government sustained and strengthened in the Petroleum Act of 1969. This was subsequently expanded with the introduction of the dichotomy between on-shore and off-shore resources. The existence of such legislation does not mean that such fundamental acts of injustice cannot be corrected. It should, indeed, be corrected, which is what the present movement for resource control is about.
Dr. Nannen teaches History at the University of Port Harcourt November 2001
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