Marxists on Resource Control

By 

Edwin Madunagu

Dr. G.G. Darah is my long-distance teacher in the application of Marxism to the ethnic question in the epoch of globalize and "postmodernism". His most recent handouts include: No retreat on resource control and Resource control is divine law. Although I have known Comrade Darah as a bright Marxist intellectual for a long time, somewhere between 20 and 25 years, he has not always been my teacher in the sense in which I now use the term. As a member of the Radical Left Movement, Darah had, for about a decade (from late 1970s to late 1980s) distinguished himself as a very conscious activist, always prescribing and defending the correct Marxist line - as he saw it - honestly, selflessly and with all the energy and intellect he could muster. Darah's closest ally in this self-imposed mission was the late Comrade Ola Oni. Beyond that, Darah distinguished himself in the movement as an expert in the production of communiqués from usually stormy meetings and conferences. (We recall that meetings of the Left were usually stormy). He would, even before delegates had finished packing their files, produce a draft statement that would satisfy the largest fraction of the participants.

I adopted Comrade Darah as a teacher for two interconnected reasons. First, he has remained a Marxist even while dealing passionately with the ethnic and social minority question. Secondly, he is from the Niger Delta. Let me explain the connection between these two criteria. I would simply have listened to Darah with sympathy if he was not a Marxist, if his only attribute had been that he is from the Niger Delta. On the other hand, if Darah had been only a Marxist interested in the ethnic question, I would have paid close attention to what he writes, but would not have adopted him as a teacher. Darah is the second Nigerian Marxist of my own generation from the Niger Delta whose passion on the ethnic question has deeply impressed me. The first was Anthony Engurube, a Nigerian of Ijaw extraction who collapsed and died in Lagos a few years ago while arguing the fate of the Niger Delta with his insensitive neighbors. I met Comrade Tony at the University of Lagos in October 1973 at the height of the Arab-Israeli war. I was then a graduate student of Mathematics in the university while Tony was an itinerant Marxist agitator. Before my encounter with Tony, although I regarded myself as a radical socialist, I was on the side of Israel in that bloody war. How I found myself on Israeli side I cannot clearly remember now. I can however guess that my support was an expression of a resilient strand of my pre-Marxist consciousness.

My encounter with Tony, inevitably, I can now say, transferred my sympathy to the Arab/Palestinian side. But beyond that, I learnt that the Marxist social theory and methodology can be applied not only to relations between social classes but also, and with equal force, to relations between races, nations, nationalities and other social categories. This was a landmark in my development. The irony of the matter, however, is that although Tony Engurube's application of Marxism to imperialism and the national question played a key role in transforming me to a Marxist, for a long time thereafter I virtually neglected the national question and Tony's passionate attitude to it. And yet Tony remained very close to me, politically, emotionally and physically from 1973 until 1994 when I left Lagos. I did not, or could not, fully appreciate Tony Engurube, this exceptional revolutionary Marxist, socialist, humanist, nationalist and internationalist, until he passed away, destroyed by the combined force of the iniquity perpetrated on the people of the Niger Delta and the failure of his comrade and compatriots to appreciate the reality, specificity and enormity of ethnic oppression and exploitation in Nigeria. G.G. Darah is another opportunity offered me by history to appreciate the Niger Delta question from a Marxist and native source.

Resource control is a non-Marxist term. But we know what those who coined the term and have now popularized it mean by it. Resource control is an aspect of the ethnic question, ultimately the core aspect. What G.G. Darah has been saying and what, before him, Tony Engurube was saying, can be summarized as follows; "Since crude oil was discovered in commercial quantity in the Niger Delta about half a century ago, this natural resource has been exploited for the benefit of areas of Nigeria other than the Niger Delta and Nigerians other than the people of the Niger Delta: Indeed, the more the Niger Delta produces, the deeper its destitution. This massive and continuous exploitation has been sustained by the structure of power in Nigeria which has been weighted against the people of the Niger Delta from the last phase of decolonisation to the present. To arrest this situation and then reverse it, the Niger Delta must control its resources within the context of renegotiated and restructured Nigeria, that is, a truly federal and genuinely democratic Nigeria". This summary is mine, but I am convinced it captures their advocacy.

The summary is the case of the Niger Delta. That is how a Niger Delta nationalist would summarize the case. That is how Darah, and Engurube, before him, would summarize it. It is the detailed argument that will reveal differences in ideological orientation and political persuasion. It is in these details that class analysis (national, international and local) and explanatory notes will come in. My question is whether, before the detailed argument, or even in the absence of it, this summary should be acceptable to a Nigerian Marxist. My answer is yes: first, because it is correct at the general, that is, macro level; and secondly, because that is how the masses of the Niger Delta now apprehend the matter, and are fighting it out. Some of our Marxist compatriots will not accept this summary statement, even with explanation. And in doing this, they would not care discrediting Marxism by denying what everyone else sees. The irony here is that these compatriots would claim to be the real Marxists; others are denounced as tribalists. But the real tragedy is that for a very long-time these Marxists who deny reality were treated in the movement with respect and, sometimes, even reverence. My categorical position now is that anyone who denies the Niger Delta case, even as summarized, cannot be a Marxist or a socialist or a Nigerian nationalist. But since I am committed to Nigerian unity, and in particular the unity of progressive and leftist forces within the country, I shall, for political reasons, reduce my position by simply saying that they are Marxists of a strange type.

The details to which I had made reference include the following: that the exploitation of the Niger Delta is carried out by the alliance of the Nigerian ruling classes and imperialism; that in this alliance imperialism exercises a hegemony; that within the Nigerian ruling classes, the fraction from the Niger Delta is a miserable minority in numerical strength, in wealth and in power; that minority status is both the cause and effect of the exploitation of the Niger Delta as region within the Nigerian state; that the dominant fractions of the Nigerian ruling classes do not use the wealth they loot from the Niger Delta for the benefit of "their people" although these poor people whose names are invoked in vain are often mobilized to fight their imaginary enemies on the "other side;" that there are many privileged, comfortable and even wealthy people in the Niger Delta, some of who are collaborators in the massive exploitation of "their people," that at several levels the material conditions of the Nigerian people are similar across the land; and that the best revolutionary strategy of liberation is to unite all the oppressed and dispossessed across the land.

These are some of the points a Marxist is expected to make in the argument of the Niger Delta case as presented. And it is these facts that will inform a Marxist formation both in its alliance with other radical political groups and in its participation in the mass political struggle to solve the problem. But a Marxist is not permitted to use this class analysis to dismiss or ridicule the Niger Delta question as earlier summarized.

Madunagu is of the University of Calabar