Epilogue To Operation Delta Storm

Epilogue To Operation Delta Storm

Let me pre-empt my conclusion. The vigilant electorate and people of Delta State will resist and defeat the wicked forces that are desperate to colonise them through the diabolical attempt to prevent Governor James Onanefe Ibori from contesting the governorship elections on April 19. The scenes of this absurd drama have been on display for the past few weeks. Some politicians in Delta State went to court to stop Ibori from the contest on the basis of a spurious and fictitious trial in which Ibori was allegedly convicted in 1995. I had read all the media versions of that so-called conviction and I was certain that the documents emanated from persons who had allowed the quest for power to overwhelm their sense of elementary logic. That was what inspired me to write the three-part article in The Guardian with the title, "Urhobo, Ibori and the Burden of History".

On March 24, an Abuja High Court judge dismissed the case as phony and farcical. Even if the litigants pursue their appeal to its logical conclusion, I have no doubt that the outcome will end up in fiasco. Yet the matter will not be forgotten because it is a political rather than a legal issue. All patriots in the Niger Delta view it from this angle. I will now stretch out the wings of this political devilry. Why is Ibori the target of this sinister plot? The mercenary news media that wanted to make money from the saga have speculated that it is because Ibori supported Dr. Alex Ekueme's candidacy against incumbent President Olusegun Obasanjo during the primaries of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). That reason cannot stand the fury of logic because even if this were true, Ibori could not be the only governor who showed this inclination. In any case Ekueme, the chief antagonist, had since gone to court to seek redress. And no one has found it necessary to concoct a court conviction against him for doing so.

Some of the media terrorists went to the extent of imputing that Governor Ibori is being persecuted for his closeness with the late military dictator, Gen. Sani Abacha. This is also a childish reasoning. There are many pro-Abacha elements in Obasanjo's cabinet and other arms of government in the country. They have not been vilified the manner Ibori is experiencing. Indeed, if Ibori were so connected with the powerful Abacha machine, a provincial court in unknown Bwari could not have had the temerity to charge him, much more find him guilty. Given what we all know of the Abacha junta, that court and its personnel would have paid a price for daring where angels fear to tread. The third excuse given for the persecution of Governor Ibori has more substance. That is that the man is an indomitable advocate of the demand for resource control and fair federalism, two burning issues which are now the anthem of the people and nations of the Niger Delta. This is why I stated in the opening paragraph that the forces (not just the agents) behind this project will be humiliated politically.

The resource control agenda unites every freeborn citizen of the Niger Delta region. Ibori is on the barricades on the issue for this and other reasons. In case they don't know, the mischief-makers in Abuja should recognize that Ibori swore to pursue the resource control mandate before he became governor. He said so unambiguously in November 1998 at the Oghara flag-off of his campaigns. He has remained faithful to his conscience on the matter. Beyond the subjective factor, there is a larger one anchored on the political economy of oil in Nigeria. Delta State has been the chief financier of Nigeria for 35 years because the state is the leading producer of oil and gas. Every year, Delta State contributes N700 billion to the Federal treasury. Even with the 13 per cent derivation formula, all that Delta State gets in a year from the Federation Account is about N50 billion. This amounts to a net loss of N650 billion in a single year.

In the four years of Obasanjo's government, Delta State has contributed about N2,800 billion to Nigeria's national income. There are 26 states in the country that contribute nothing by way of revenue. About 35 per cent of the money spent annually by these states and the Federal Government comes from Delta State. This is why Delta State is in the frontline of the resource control struggle. We are now in a position to unveil other hidden factors behind the campaign of calumny against Governor Ibori. The Yoruba-dominated Alliance for Democracy (AD) party is desperate to extend its sphere of influence to the banks of the River Niger.

To achieve this, it is necessary to capture Delta State in the governorship elections. This scheme is a continuation of the imperialist agenda inaugurated by the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo in 1951 under the aegis of the former Action Group (AG) party. In that year, the AG-controlled parliament in Ibadan decided to change the title of the king of the 400-year-old Itsekiri kingdom from Olu of Itsekiri to Olu of Warri. The primary targets of this annexationist drive were the lands of Warri Township jointly owned by the Urhobo, Ijaw and Itsekiri. That sinister act of brinkmanship poured a little poison into the chalice of Urhobo-Itsekiri relations, at the political level that is. In spite of this external interference in their relationship, the masses of Urhobo and Itsekiri have managed to keep a fairly harmonious bond.

The Urhobo and Itsekiri have the most extensive network of marriage and social intercourse in Nigeria. Along the corridors of the Ethiope, Warri and other aquatic terrains, the two groups share family names, markets, school ties and other attributes of ethnographic identity. The Urhobo and Itsekiri share with the Ijaw, the common tragedy of being plundered by the omnipotent Federal Government. The foregoing background throws light on the current tall dream of sections of the Afenifere to add Delta to states under its control. Obasanjo's faction of the PDP has sealed an electoral deal with the AD; hence the latter is not to field any candidate in the presidential elections on April 19.

To compensate the AD, Herod will have to drink blood from the head of a Delta State John the Baptist. Note that the engineers of this Yoruba imperialist plot are not focusing on Kwara State whose Ilorin was stolen from the Yoruba by the Fulani in the 19th century. Rather, it is oil-rich Delta State that is the sacrifice that should be offered for these power-drunk gods of politics. It is a satanic plot that is doomed to fail and it is already failing calamitously. Ibori won the contest to be governor in 1999 because of the massive vote he got from the Urhobo and their Isoko and Ijaw allies. The Urhobo constitute at least 50 per cent of the electorate in Delta State. The assault against Ibori is aimed at weakening the ascendant power of the Urhobo in Niger Delta oil-defined politics. The calculation of the Abuja wizards and the Afenifere think-tank is to do maximum damage to the Urhobo so as to undermine the emerging trans-ethnic solidarity in the Niger Delta.

It should be noted that besides money-guzzling Abuja and Kano and Kaduna States, the states of western Nigeria are the most favoured by the unjust politics of access to Federal largesse. This is evident in the control of technocratic and bureaucratic arms of ministries and departments. The relative urban splendour, real estate and hotel business, commerce and services industries in Lagos and its Ogun State satellite cities are made possible by oil money from the Niger Delta. The bulk of the electric energy consumed in these places comes from gas fields in Delta State. This is one of the factors behind Obasanjo's adamant opposition to resource control and increased derivation for the oil-producing states.

There is no point now to take on the media organisations that got recruited for the electoral coup against Ibori. When all this storm is over, and it will be over soon, these media organs will explain why they fell easy prey to this macabre trick. Perhaps, Dr. Reuben Abati who heads the Editorial Board of The Guardian will enlighten his readers about why he chose the elevated platform of an Urhobo-owned newspaper to drive such an unkind cut into the political fortunes of Ibori. Abati argued in his well-timed article published just before the Abuja High Court threw out the vexatious suit that since Ibori's case was becoming complicated, he stood the chance of being removed from office even if he won the forthcoming elections. According to Abati, the candidate whose votes would be next to Ibori's would automatically become governor of Delta State.

In his permutation, that candidate would be from the AD. People who are savouring the oil boom in Abuja and other colonial centres of Nigeria often forget that the enhanced income and social visibility they have are subsidised by money from Delta and other states of the Niger Delta. If justice were the prime basis for keeping Nigeria one, as Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, rightly observed in the 1970s, Ogun State, on the basis of its contribution to the national economy, will hardly qualify to have a president of Nigeria. Yet General Obasanjo was head of state in 1976-79. Chief Ernest Shonekan became one by default in 1993. Chief M.K.O. Abiola narrowly missed being one that same year. Obasanjo has been president for four years now and is gunning for a second term. If he gets it he would be head of Nigeria for 12 years altogether.

How much does Ogun State contribute to the national treasury that gives it this political leverage?

I will now conclude by reiterating my initial position. It does not matter now which way the court case goes. If Ibori wins the legal tussle as he will surely do, the PDP will reap the electoral benefits and consign the Ibori persecutors to political irrelevance. Under the Ibori tenure, the PDP in Delta State has created the best national record in terms of delivery of democracy dividends The PDP will never surrender that state to the imperial manipulation of the Afenifere and it sponsors in Abuja.

Second, the generation of Urhobo to which the Ibori team belongs are more educated, materially stronger and politically more sophisticated than their parents who were duped by Awolowo and his cohorts from 1951 to 1970, the year he conspired with General Yakubu Gowon to disinherit the people of the Niger Delta of their oil riches. The current generation of Urhobo will combat all evil forces all the way until those forces abandon their colonial designs.

April 2003