The bitter experience of the Urhobo

The bitter experience of the Urhobo

IN the First Republic (1963-66), there were four regions in Nigeria West, North, East and Mid-West, comprising Benin and Delta Provinces. The only Federal government road to the Delta Province, now the greatest oil-producing State in the country, is the Benin-Warri road, a tiny, albeit macadamised two-lane pathway, barely admitting two vehicles running in opposite directions. The 85-kilometre byway that cannot be dignified with the name of a 'road' is riddled with potholes and pools of water. The byway's sinuous course has caused some of the ghastliest automobile accidents in this country. Chief Jereton Mariere, first civilian Governor of Mid-West Region, and countless other celebrities of Urhobo, Ijaw, Isoko and Itsekiri extraction, perished on this road. The Urhobo race occupies a large geographical area of the Delta Province of the defunct Mid-west Region.

The Urhobo nation is easily the most populous homogeneous ethnic group in Delta State. It is the fifth most populous nationality in Nigeria. In his book, "Thoughts On Nigerian Constitution" (1966: 24), one of the founding fathers of modern Nigeria, the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo, stated that "there are ten principal national groups in Nigeria which constitute about 80 per cent of the entire population. They are Hausa/Fulani, Yoruba, Igbo, Efik/Ibibio, Kanuri, Tiv, Ijaw, Edo, Urhobo and Nupe. These ten and the other national groups, who are still to be identified separately, are diverse in their origins and speak different languages..." Accordingly, he went on to propose the creation of eleven States, which included "an Upper Delta State, whose language is Urhobo; a Mid-Western State, whose language is Edo, a Niger State, whose language is Nupe", etc.

This (the Urhobo) is the tribe that successive Nigerian Federal Governments have relegated to a subaltern background and treated with nonchalant unconcern over the years. The purest crude oil, the world over, is found in the womb of Urhoboland. Every day, the nation derives over N40 billion from the petroleum resource mined from the bosom of that land. Urhoboland is a literal repertoire of intellectuals in various fields of learning; yet none of them (with the possible exception of Engr Godwin Omene) (who is prejudicially hedged around with a super non-executive Chairman), is good enough to man any of the scant Federal parastatals located even on it. If the Universities of Ibadan, Lagos, Ife, Ahmadu Bello, Nigeria (Nsukka), Maiduguri etc. were on Urhoboland, their Vice Chancellors would, as a matter of practice, have been imported from any of the in-groups. I wonder. I fail to understand why an indigenous government should enslave a whole section of its population in a manner that was not attempted by the past (foreign) colonial masters.

Since the inception of the Obasanjo administration, in May 1999, Urhoboland has quaffed whole cups of indignities and deprivation to the dregs. It has not experienced the ministration of any cabinet appointment, not even at the level of a Minister of State. Yet, some States, with fewer populations and much fewer educated people and contributing virtually nothing to the economy of this country, have had a surfeit of ministerial and kindred appointments, such as Ambassadors, Personal Assistants and Advisers. And if any of these appointees voluntarily resigns his/her appointment or is turned adrift for corruption or inefficiency, the resultant vacant position is filled with another person from the same group. I wonder.

Before the first states creation exercise in 1967, there were twenty-five provinces in Nigeria. With the passage of time, all but two Provinces - Benin and Delta - had become separate states, each of which can now boast of Appian Ways and enormous Federal presence in terms of industries, airports and tertiary institutions. In 1976, when a number of States were created, the Mid-West State was re-christened "Bendel", a cheap acronym, deriving from Benin/Delta. That, in the warped opinion of the inveterate oppressors, should mollify the susceptibilities of members of the foolish out-group! In 1991, twenty-four years after the original twenty states were created, two States - Edo and Delta - were grudgingly and perfidiously created out of the fourth Region.

Today, three of the four erstwhile Regions have thirty-four States among themselves. The fourth region, Mid-west, has two. Today, of the over forty federal universities and other forms of tertiary educational institutions nationwide, Delta State cannot boast of a single one. The instrument establishing the Nigerian Youth Service Corps forbids indigenes of a State to serve in that State. Which is good. But then fresh graduates from the oil-producing States are posted to other States of the Sharia-North, the South-East or the South-west, most of whose corpers are posted to the nine oil-producing States. After acquiring one-year experience in the oil-producing States, the oil companies, which have become negatively embroiled in the politics of Nigeria, retain the "experienced" youth corpers to the eternal detriment of the indigenes. Members of the in-groups are deliberately trained, or encouraged to specialise, in petroleum engineering and related disciplines to enable them to occupy top positions in the petroleum industry.

There are twenty-two kingdoms in Urhoboland. Each of them is rich in petroleum and other mineral resources. But their indigenes watch with mouths agape as men and women from other States of the Federation occupy all the professional and administrative positions in the oil companies and in the NNPC and NNPC-related companies. From 1971-2002, the Ministry of Petroleum has produced eleven Ministers: Alhaji Shettima Ali Mungono (1971-75); Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (1975-79); Alhaji Yahaya Dikko (1979-83); Prof. Tam David-West (1984-86); Dr. Rilwanu Lukman (1986-90); Prof. Jibril Aminu (1990-92); Dr. Chu S.P. Okongwu (1992-93); Chief Phillip C. Asiodu (1993-94); Chief Don Etiebet (1994-95); Chief Dan Loya Etete (1995-98) and President Olusegun Obasanjo (May 1999 to date): There is no Urhobo man or even anybody from the original Delta Province on that list.

From 1977 to date, the Ministry has produced nine Group Managing Directors: Chief Festus Marinho (1977-80 and January, 1984-October 1985); Chief Odiliyi Lolomari (April 1980-August 1981); Mr. Lawrence A. Amu (Oct. 1981-Jan. 1984); Dr. Thomas M. John (April 1990-June 1990); Dr. Edmund Daukuro (June 1990-Oct. 1993); Mr. Chamberlain O. Oyibo (Nov. 1993-Aug. 1995); Engr. Dalhatu Bayero (Aug. 1995-May 1999) and Mr. Jackson E. Gaius-Obaseki (May 1999-to date): None of the foregoing is Urhobo or any person from the oil-producing Delta State.

The Board piloting the new NNPC comprises sixteen members: Chief Olusegun Obasanjo (Chairman); Dr. Rilwanu Lukman (Alternate Chairman); Mr. Jackson E. Gaius-Obaseki (GMD); Engr. Mansur Ahmed (GED(R&P); Engr. A.O. Ogedegbe (GED(E&T); Mallam Ibrahim M Abba (GED(CS); Mr. O.C. Harry (GED(F&A); Dr. A.C. Uzoigwe (GED(E&D); Rev. B.I. Omomukuyo (GED(C&I); Alhaji Ibrahim Gubio (Director); Mr. Charles Obule (Director); Mr. Bassey E. Henshaw (Director); Sir Isaac Igboamalu (Director); Dr. Onaolapo Soleye (Director); Alhaji M.A. Abdullahi (Director) and Chief Sena Anthony (Secretary to the Corporation). Haba!

The first most populous nationality in Nigeria, the Urhobo from whose land over N40 billion is derived on a daily basis (i.e. over N14.6 trillion per annum) has no single person on the Board of the NNPC. It is daylight armed robbery on the part of successive Federal Governments of Nigeria. It is the height of perfidy and inequity, which cannot conceivably be perpetrated against any other group in this country without dire consequences. Like the Europe of the 19th and 20th centuries, the three major ethnic groups maintain a delicate balance of power among themselves at the expense of the other groups. Successive Federal Governments have taken advantage of the seeming docility and peaceful nature of the Urhobo, who have hitherto refused or neglected to form any militant group like the Egbesu Boys, the Bakassi, OPC, Arewa People's Congress, MOSOP, etc It is clear, to all intents and practical purposes, that the Federal Government inadvertently encourages violence by ignoring non-violent people. Witness the Government's decision to cough out N5 billion to settle all of the outstanding allowances of the police (sentenced to eternal submission to any authority however iniquitous), after their subalterns had downed tools.

IN 1998, the Urhobo people of Jesse took advantage of the carelessness of the NNPC, whose old and rusty pipes leaked petrol at their backyards. Somebody, from nowhere, ignited the highly inflammable liquid, and over one thousand six hundred men, women (including pregnant women) and children were burnt, some of them to ashes, within minutes - a more horrifying spectacle than was witnessed at Oke-Afa canal following the avoidable explosion of high-calibre bombs on January 27, 2002, in Lagos. The last of Nigeria's military dictators, Alhaji Abdusalami Abubakar, got to the scene of that disaster, pouted contemptuously, and remarked, with hauteur and arrant insensitivity, that the victims were saboteurs! That inane remark represented the report of the one-man commission of inquiry into the cause(s) of the inferno and the white paper thereon! The rest of the world sympathised, but not Abuja. Oviri Court, Adeje and Ekakpamre, all in Urhoboland, also experienced the decimation of their populations by petrol fire. The federal government did nothing to soothe the excruciating agonies experienced by the people.

Nigeria, definable in terms of the so-called major ethnic groups, has effectively enslaved the Urhobo and, indeed, all of the so-called minority groups in the South-South of this nation-space, whose very foundations are threatened by the ghoulist insensitivities, greed and arrogance of its successive leaders. Each time Nigeria appoints a Minister, an Adviser, a Presidential Assistant, an Ambassador or a Chairman of a federal parastatal, his/her kinsmen and women promptly and invidiously organise "a grand reception for our great son/daughter". It is on such "great sons and daughters" that the federal government will later confer national honours -MON, OON, OFR, GCON, GCFR, etc. Urhobo people have no "great sons/daughters" to organise "grand receptions" for. Any Urhobo man/woman who is great is so by dint of his/her own personal effort. In a situation in which the president and the vice-president are seen to be for the three major ethnic groups, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President of the Senate, both of whom should be seen as leaders of all Nigeria, regard themselves, and are regarded, as "the great sons" of their ethnic groups, Urhobo people continue to wring their hands in utter frustration. If any of the political appointees veers away from the sublime to the ridiculous, and is criticised by anyone from another group, the kinsmen and women of the erring appointee kick up a shindy as a mark of solidarity with their "great" son or daughter. Check any federal institution or parastatal headed by a member of the three major tribes, and you will discover that over three-quarters of the employees there are from the ethnic group of that head! Talk of section 14 of the 1999 Constitution on Federal character!!

Innumerable contracts for the dualisation of the "road", the only federal "road', through which you can access Urhoboland, the Benin-Warri road, were awarded by successive military governments, from Babangida to Abdusalami Abubakar. For each of the contracts, huge sums of money were appropriated and later misappropriated. At a point, Nigeria insultingly built a toll-gate at the Benin end of the road, which toll-gate was designed to eke out enough money, with the passage of time, to build the road. Suddenly, the building of the toll-gate stopped and, with it, the construction of the road. Then came civil rule, in May 1999. Urhobo people voted massively for the PDP, now the ruling party. A fresh contract for the construction of the road was awarded by the Obasanjo government. Work resumed in earnest, some two years ago. The length of the Benin-Warri road is just about 85 kilometres. The Minister of Works and Housing has made an Appian Way of the Benin end of the road, from the Ring Road (inside Benin) to the insult of a tollgate, now demolished. From there to Ologbo, the Delta/Edo boundary, the "dualised" road takes the form of a road constructed in the early nineties and separated by about ten metres from a newly constructed tiny road, both of which are too far apart to allow for a concrete divider, such as separates normal dualised carriageways. The new road terminates at a few kilometres from Ologbo, the Edo/Delta boundary.

The Sapele-Warri road has claimed tens of hundreds of lives in the past one year and a half, when a rickety bridge between Sapele and Warri caved in after being gutted by fire from a burning petrol tanker. The resultant diversion through the bush has become a gully and a lair of armed robbers. Imagine if that road were the Lagos-Ibadan road, the Kano-Sokoto road, the Kaduna-Maiduguri road! The Minister of Works would have been stung by the super-tribal bug and would have drafted the latter-day Appius Claudius for the repair works, within days. Meanwhile, the N10 billion Benin bypass looks like the proverbial road from Rome to Brindisi! And now, President Obasanjo may allow us to "control" our resources; he vows to manage them for us! Haba! It is a truism that oppression and deprivation are hardly a good nursery-bed for the growth of patriotism and nationalistic sentiment.

Once upon a time, there was a PTF (Petroleum Trust Fund), established, ostensibly, for the alleviation of hardship experienced in the health sector, improvement of infrastructural facilities, nationwide, and supply of science and other equipment to educational institutions. Delta State was not represented on the Board of the PTF, and so was precluded entirely from its services. Yet one hundred per cent of its funds derived from petroleum. Haba! Nigeria, Haba!! In the immortal language of Desmond Morris, "you can dominate just so much, just so long and just so many, but even within the hot-house atmosphere of a super-tribe, there is a limit. If, when that limit is reached, the bio-social pendulum tilts gently back to its balance mid-point, the society can count itself lucky...."

March 2002