The fading glory of Akassa

by

IBIBA DON PEDRO 

"Akassa has faded to nothing", was how a youth at Kongho in Akassa clan put it, recently.

This observation captures somewhat, the degree of Akassas descent from the heights it once occupied. Still it constitutes a certain under statement.

Akassa is like a mistress to an imperial overlord who lost favour with her mentor and got banished to insignificance and anonymity.

Akassa, before it lost its soul, leaving an empty shell, was the headquarters of the trading empire, the Royal Niger company, built by English adventurer and entrepreneur, George Taubman Goldies. Centred around the palm oil export trade in the 18th century, it formed the seeds for the ultimate conquest and colonisation of the tribes which eventually emerged to form Nigeria.

Before this era, it had been an important outpost of slave trade in the 16th and 17th centuries, through access to the nooks and crannies of the Deltas interiors, facilitated by the River Nun at its Northern most reaches and its openness to sea going vessels at its coast.

Little today gives the faintest hint of the islands significance in the historical events that shaped ongoing developments in the Niger Delta and the rest of the country.

From a distance on the Nun River, Akassa presents as yet another mangrove bordered island where life orbits around the sea.

Hand-paddled canoes and thatched huts around the banks in most of the 26 communities which make up the Akassa clan underline the simplicity of existence there.

At the jetty in Kongho, one of the larger communities, a handful of youths loitered, some engaged in a chatter or simply gazed at the endless stretch of water, sky and mangrove forest.

Some leave, their places occupied soon enough by other youths. The flow and ebb of idle youths is replicated at the waterfront of other communities including Sangana, Bekekiri, and Okumbiri and the rest.

Perhaps, this representation of wasting youth more than any other imagery captures the bleakness of life in the communities. A youth corper serving in Kongho, Lawal Olumuyiwa, told me during a recent visit that "What I find shocking and upsetting is the sight of young people with nothing to do. Some have managed to finish secondary school but have nothing to do. Others did not go beyond primary school and their situation looks even bleaker."

For those fortunate not to be condemned to "gazing" their youth away, there is a hard life at sea with a father, mother or older sibling casting nets for an increasing diminishing stock of fish on the Nun River, Sangana or the Atlantic, in tiny canoes. For many of the fathers and mothers in the communities, there is no alternative to this cruising the waters for sustenance and retiring into the thatch huts for rest.

The only other option is to relocate to the slum water fronts of Yenagoa, Port Harcourt or Warri, doing odd jobs, according to an elder at Beckekiri. For the younger generation of the Ijaw speaking Akassa people, life at sea, increasingly holds less and less appeal. An Akassa youth Chris Newton-Igbani had asked "who wants to spend all his life toiling to fish to end up poor in a thatch hut? If you see your father fishing all his life, day and night and ending up prosperous, youd be encouraged to follow, but if all you remember about growing up is rags for clothes and life in a thatch house, you would not want that life for your own children." Some, lucky to have escaped the bleakness that registers forcefully in the communities have found a life in the city centres of Port Harcourt, Warri or Lagos. A few modern buildings , mostly bungalows existing side by side with thatch or bamboo huts in the communities, attest to this. Life has not always been on this seeming low slide for the Akassa people.

Their forebears had been masters of sorts of the palm oil trade in the Niger Delta in the years following the abolition of the ignoble traffic in humans, acting as the middlemen and determining the tempo of the trade through the unique position of Akassa situated between the interiors and the European traders at the coast. Still, even these ancestors of the Akassa people did not reap any real benefits from the palm oil trade as their control of the trade was soon undermined by the schemes of these European "partners", especially, George Taubman

Goldie who with the support of British colonial sea power soon relegated the Ijaw chiefs and traders to mere pawns in his game of power and control of Niger trade was said to be worth at least £300,000 a year at that time. A forth coming book on forty years of oil production by shell, written by journalist, Ike Okonta and Environmental lawyer, Oronto Douglas, titled "where vultures feast" captured that epoch in Akassas history thus, "Not only did Goldie and the Royal Niger company ( RNC) deliberately cheat the people of the Niger Delta by selling them worthless mere trickles in exchange for palm oil which was then in high demand in European factories, he parcelled off vast areas and imposed heavy duties on whoever might want to trade in his territory" thereby banning Brass traders from trading in their own land"

The 19th century fathers of Akassa, hardly seamen that they were, did not take this threat to their existence without complain. Following the conspiratorial silence of the British Consul General in charge of the area, James Hewett, they had taken action to slay the monster that threatened, by burning down the RNC factory at Akassa where Goldie held sway.

Retaliation was swift and the Ijaw people at the centre of the attack on the factory had their communities in Brass, Twon and Fish Town, destroyed.

Goldie had rebuilt his fortress at Akassa and held even more imperous sway commanding the palm oil trade, exporting thousands of drums of palm oil annually.

As colonialism dug deep in the area culminating in the amalgamation of the Southern and Northern protectorates to form a country in 1914, under Frederick Lugard, Akassas profile as a major trading port, like Bonny, Abonnema, Koko and others, grew.

Still, of the wealth generated through the export of produce through the town, only an insignificant percentage trickled to the inhabitants who have remained principally fishermen roaming the sea to live.

Today, apart from obvious signs of contact with Western civilisation in the way of a few primary and secondary schools within the communities and the imposing church steeples, reflecting in a populace where virtually everyone including the very old, discrept looking fisher folk speak English or "pidgin", there is little left of the glory days of Akassa.

Contact with the Europeans had translated to conversion to Christianity and acquisition of some western education but for many, going to school had ended in primary school. Capturing the difficulties many aspiring to better life endured, Dr. Mofia Akobo, one time Petroleum Minister under the Gowon administration and a notable document of life in the Niger Delta, noted that "for people to have acquired any education beyond elementary school in the heart of the Niger Delta is something of a miracle. There were very few schools beyond that level in the area. Many of us had to go to school outside the core Niger Delta experiencing unimaginable difficulties. For many who managed to leave their villages, there was no question of going back. In the fifties and sixties, only few slow moving house boats plied those areas and it took several weeks to move from Port Harcourt or Warri to the interiors".

Contact with Europeans that translated into growth into modern cities and centres of commerce and industry as experienced in Port Harcourt and Lagos on the coast, missed Akassa.

Akassa has been used and dumped. At Bekekiri "whitemans land", the shells of Goldies strongholds as well as the depots where slaves were chained before transportation to the new world remain. These and the wreaks of a railway line once used in transporting palm oil, and timber out of the Ijaw territory to England and the rest of Europe, a rusty canon with nozzle strategically pointed in the direction of the ghoulish slave holds remain, a lasting testimony to the depths humanity once sank.

Today, no steam or coal driven vessels sail past the mangrove banks of Akassa or its coastal stretch. No swaggering sailors and merchants spotting bowler hats and brass buttoned coats, step feet on Akassas breathtaking sandy beaches, gingerly at first, then confidently and finally, stomping over sand, land and man.

In their place, helicopters fly past daily ferrying men and materials to the offshore platforms where Texcao oil producing company (TOPCON) and consolidated oil (CONOIL) have been drilling for oil since 1974 and 1998, respectively.

Like palm oil trade before it, over two decades of oil production in the seas where Akassa fishermen and their forebears have always roamed, has not brought any tangible benefits. Nothing betrays this as on occasions when the deleterous consequences of oil production as in oil spillage or blow outs play out. A recent pollution that affected over a 10 kilometre stretch on the Akassa coast is believed to have caused the death of about eight children, and an elderly woman in Opu-Kumbiri and Oginibiri communities in the clan.

Five children from Opukumbiri including Timidigi New year, 3, Timidigi Okoko, 5 Ayebatonye Pogi, 3, Job Igonigo, 3, Ayebami Omoho, 3, had reportedly died from ingesting substances believed to have issued from the oil production process on December 1, while an elderly woman Madam Salomey Owi, and Tuma Udoh, 9, Precious Abel, 9 and Tiuu Daniel, 10, also died after they had spent some time in the waters at the Oginibiri beach trawling for small fish and shrimps.

Villagers told me during a visit to the communities perched at the bottomost end of Bayelsa State, that they treated the children who did not die immediately with local concoctions. The only health centre of any note is situated at Bekekiri, which is accessible through a one and half-hour walk along the beach from Opukumbiri or over 30 minutes by canoe.

Most of the communities are in darkness and most source water for cooking needs and other use from ponds and wells; the communities are mostly connected through rickety wooden bridges broken in sections. In some sections, access is facilitated only when the tide is out. Otherwise, a knee deep wade through debris-littered sections of beach is promised.

Lamenting the condition of the people, Chief Mytom Pomina a community leader in Bekekiri observed that "we suffer the consequences of oil production including oil spillage and gas flaring, but the benefits do not get to us. We have been living with this pain for many years."

Other sources of bitterness in the communities and source of rancour among brothers lie in what locals describe as discriminatory practices of the oil companies. Famous Ekeru, Chairman of community Development Committee (CDC) at Bekekiri also known as UAC said that many times spills occur, the Texaco People only consider certain communities including Sangana, Koluama, Funipa and ignore our community. Still when oil spillage occurs it often affects us more than those they consider host communities.

Echoing similar feelings, Elegimo Kumo Omoniyigha, chairman, Natural Resources for Opukumbiri and Okumbiri beleu, noted that "we are fishermen and our life is all about fishing. We are now like people upland because there is no more fish like we knew before. Oil production is destroying our water and farms. We experience at least two major spillage every year. Let the oil companies employ our youths and give our children scholarships like they do to other communities.

At Bekeriki (UAC), the shells of the corrugated sheet constructed warehouses that were once the centre of commercial activities in Goldies, R.NC and later UAC, now house several churches and a cinema house. If the laws governing relations between host communities and oil firms in the country do not change to ensure that the resources in Akassas waters are utilised for is development, Akassa looks set to end up like Oloibiri where oil in commercial quantity was first struck and whose indigenes have been abandoned following the cessation of oil flow, to life without potable water, electricity, roads, and other amenities that had looked set to follow from the day white men set foot on their soil.