The Beatification of Bola Oyinbo

This two part essay is an elegy for him that fell in the heat of battle three weeks ago. It is also an eulogy for a great Nigerian and a true citizen of the world who gave his life that our children might not drink from the bitter cup that the despoilers of the earth even now are preparing for them. His name was Bola Oyibo, and chances are that you, dear reader, may have never heard of him.

But again, that is the point of Nigeria & The World. In a season when most of our newspapers and 'public commentators' give their time and energy to praising sinners masquerading as statesmen, surely a small space ought to be reserved for the little people of our country who perform feats of heroic magnitude every living hour, mending bones broken by unaccountable power; giving the little food they have to the hungry; giving shelter to those caught in life's many storms; and fighting tyrants and multinationals who take food from the mouth of little children and then proceed to fill their bellies with oil-polluted water. These true heroes do these and more without seeking publicity. And when they die in the service of Nigeria and Africa, they die quietly, in a small corner, and are buried in small, unobtrusive graves. This essay is about one of them, Bola Oyibo, and I begin it by telling you, first of all, what happened in Ilaje, his beloved community in Ondo State in 1998, that made him take up his people's cross.

While Kaiama, Yenagoa, Odi, and Oloibiri, four oil-producing communities in Bayelsa State were being besieged by soldiers deployed by General Abdulsalami Abubakar in the first months of that year, elsewhere in the western Delta the Ijo communities of Opia and Ikenyan were being given a good dose of the Chevron treatment. When youths of Ilaje community in Ondo State, led by Bola Oyibo, a young and committed political activist and community worker, attempted to occupy a Chevron oil platform to protest the company's despoilation of their fresh water and fishing grounds in May 1998, company officials called in the navy. Chevron provided helicopters, which ferried heavily armed navy personnel and anti-riot police to the platform. They opened fire as they neared the platform, circling in the air. Two men, Jola Ogungbeje and Aroleka Irowaninu, were killed on the spot.

Although Chevron officials later said that the navy men opened fire when one of the youths attempted to disarm the officers, eye witnesses said this could not have been the case as the youths were themselves not armed, and in any case the officers had opened fire even before the helicopter had landed, making the oil company's claim that the youths attempted to disarm the officers untenable.

The helicopters were pressed into service again on 4 January, 1999, this time in the two small Ijo communities of Opia and Ikenyan where Chevron has installations. Local activists in the Niger Delta say there is a link between the military attack on Yenagoa and Kaiama the previous May by soldiers and that in Opia and Ikenyan. According to them, Chevron took advantage of the mass deployment of troops in the Niger Delta by the Abubakar junta to ferry troops to the two villages with the aim of wiping them out to make way for its new oil pipeline, which is routed to pass right through the village of Opia. The soldiers, numbering about one hundred, came in four boats, one of which was fitted with a machine gun, and in a helicopter contracted to Chevron Nigeria. Opia was the first to be attacked.

Villagers said they saw a helicopter, the kind they usually saw conveying workers to Chevron's two oil wells in the village, flying over their village. At first they thought nothing of it. Then the aircraft swooped down and began firing at them. Several people were hit. Those who escaped unhurt ran into the bush. The helicopter continued circling the village, firing into the mud and wattle huts.

Then it headed for Ikenyan village. It descended to the level of the treetops and began to spray the huts with machine-gun fire. About ten huts received direct hits and went up in flames, together with their occupants.

The survivors of this attack were just emerging from the bush to take care of the wounded and bury the dead when the soldiers arrived.

They came in three boats usually used by a Chevron contractor and a navy gunboat with a swivelling machine gun mounted in front. The people of Opia and Ikenyan did not stand a chance. The traditional leader of Ikenyan, Chief Bright Pablogba, was hurrying to the beachhead to speak with the soldiers when a hail of bullets lifted him off his feet and flung him to the ground. Then the soldiers invaded the two villages, shooting at everything in sight. They shot tear gas into the air. They smashed down the door of the flimsy huts with their boots and anyone they saw was shot on the spot. Then they set the houses on fire and went about destroying all property they saw, including the fishing boats the people relied on for daily survival. Apparently, the soldiers had been told to wipe Opia and Ikenyan from the surface of the earth. They executed their brief with brutal efficiency.

A team from the respected London-based monitoring group, Human Rights Watch Africa, visited the two communities five weeks later and saw a people still reeling with shock. Here is what the team recorded:

'When Human Rights Watch visited both communities in February 1999, the death toll was still uncertain. Only four bodies had been found, but a woman and her five children fishing from a canoe by Ikenyan village were also presumed dead, since the boat was sunk and they had not returned. Fifteen people from Opia and forty-seven from Ikenyan were still missing: those who still remained in the villages believed they were dead, and that their bodies had been thrown in the river or taken away - given the isolated position of the two communities it is unlikely that they could have simply fled without anyone knowing. In Opia, which previously had a total of perhaps fifty or sixty houses, we counted forty-six completely destroyed by fire, and others were damaged. In Ikenyan, about fifty homes were destroyed, and only four left standing at one end of the village.

Teargas cannisters and cartridge cases were still scattered on the ground.'

Chevron's version of the story is that a group of youths from Opia and Ikenyan came to one of its rig locations on 3 January to demand money. Chevron acknowledged that its officials reported the matter to the military detachment in a nearby naval base who warned off the youths. The following day, according to Chevron, the youths returned to the rig in increased numbers and fully armed and engaged the armed forces in a shoot-out. Chevron claimed it was not aware of any casualties from these incidents, and that allegations that it facilitated the military expedition on Opia and Ikenyan had no basis in fact.

A joint team comprising officials of the Civil Liberties Organisation

(CLO), Environmental Rights Action (ERA), and Ijo Council for Human Rights who investigated the razing of the two communities said, however, that Chevron was being disingenuous when it claimed that the youths were armed and that they had engaged the security detail in a shoot-out. 'That is ridiculous,' said Patterson Ogon of the Ijo Council for Human Rights who led the team. 'These are poor fisherfolk. Where would they find the money to buy guns?'

Ogon also dismissed Chevron's claim that it was not aware of the deaths resulting from the invasion of the two communities on 3 January.

'Ikenyan and Opia were razed to ground. Many people were murdered in cold blood. The soldiers who carried out this dastardly act came from Madagho military base near Chevron's operational base at Escravos.

They came in a Chevron helicopter and boats used by Chevron contractors. News of the slaughter was widely reported in the newspapers the next day. So how can they say they didn't know about the deaths?

Where do they live, in Mars? Let's face it, these people were killed and their villages razed to make way for the Chevron pipeline to pass through Opia. It's cheaper. Chevron wouldn't have to incur the extra cost of re-routing the pipeline. Dead people don't ask for compensation or insist on a proper environmental impact assessment, do they?'