Ogonis should look beyond their pain

Ogonis should look beyond their pain

Reports of the proceedings of last week at the Oputa panel sitting in Port Harcourt caused memories to flood the chambers of my mind. I remembered a particular day sometime in the late 1970s or early 1980s when I was in college. My secondary school is located in the Rivers State capital. Two classmates of mine got into a fight. Nothing strange in that, of course. Fighting is some kind of rite of passage for children at that age. To earn the respect of your peers, you must strike and deflect a reasonable number of blows. But the reason for this particular brawl was not so ordinary. One of the young men involved in the conflict, the aggressor was angry because the other boy had revealed his middle name to the rest of us. He is an Ogoni, but both his first name and surname are English, a fact he took great pride in. He was, in todays parlance, a "happening guy" and he had worked very hard not to be seen as "local," or even "primitive" like the rest of his kinsmen. The revelation that he had an Ogoni middle name threatened to sully his image and send him crashing down the social ladder. In those days, an Ogoni identity was the worst thing that could happen to your social status. Being identified as Ogoni was a stigma which people like my angry classmate were very anxious to escape from.

To be an Ogoni is no longer a source of shame, but a thing of pride. This, in my view, is perhaps the simple greatest achievement of the late Ken Saro-Wiwa. Before he came along with his "I am Ogoni and proud (and angry!)", revolution, his kinsmen were, even in Rivers State, at the lowest rung of the social ladder. No self-respecting Kalabari man would give his daughter in marriage to an Ogoni man. The very idea was unthinkable, utterly repugnant. Such attitudes have not completely disapeared. It takes a while before such examples of ingrained discrimination vanish. But there is no doubt that many Ogonis are no longer ashamed of their origins. In fact, they shout it to the rooftops, not only in Nigeria, but proclaim their identify in placards in London, Brussels and New York. That is the revolution that pipe-smoking, pocket battleship called Saro-Wiwa wrought.

Beyond the painful issues which were exposed during the proceedings of the panel in Port Harcourt, this incandescent fact of Ogoni renaissance shines brightly. But this fact, as heartwarming as it is, cannot obscure the fact that the Ogonis are in pain, hot throbbing pain. The late General Sani Abacha was the Rehoboam who flogged the Ogoni with scorpions. The exploits of Major Obi Umahi and Col. Paul Okuntimo in Ogoniland will endure as long as the Ogoni people last. The wholesale rapes, in particular, symbolise the savaging of these people by a government which was supposed to protect them. It is scandalous that Okuntimo, despite the deluge of evidence has, so far, failed to utter one word of apology for the horrors visited on the Ogoni people. Rather, he insists on peddling the fiction that his soldiers did no evil in Ogoniland, as if the soldiers who served under his command were not part of the same Nigerian army whose records in Odi and Umuechem shocked the civilised world. His testimony, so far, points to the troubling boil at the heart of the Oputa issue: what should be done with those who are not ready to tell the truth at this truth and reconciliation forum? Go ahead and reconcile, any way? One cannot but sympathise with Justice Chukwudifu Oputa, a good man doing a difficult job. His performance so far is beyond reproach. He has allowed all to have their say, he has tried to impose order even as egregious liars and emotional accusers threaten to seize the initiative from him. He passionately wants to marry the rigour and thoroughness of a well-regulated court proceeding with the moral imperative of reconciliation. This is, to put it mildly, a virtually impossible task.

For victims like the Ogonis the proceedings are a painful reminder of the agony they suffered and the enormity of their losses. Oputa, more than anything else, wants the panel to give both the oppressor and their former oppressors an opportunity to shake hands and forgive. But how do you forgive when the one who wronged you does not even accept responsibility for his crimes? The reported attempt by some Ogoni youths to lynch Okuntimo outside the court premises may not be legally justifiable, but it is understandable in the circumstances. Placed against the heat of memory, human emotions are liable to boil over. Yet, the Ogonis need to go beyond these regular, ritualistic explosions of anger in order to reap some gain from their struggles of the recent past. Right now, all they have to show for the much publicised revolution is pain.

The first step is to accept the fact that all is not well with the struggle. Ogoniland is riven into factions. Ledum Mittee is only a faction leader locked in a battle with other leading lights who say that he has betrayed the struggle. Saro-Wiwas son, Ken and his younger brother do not recognise Mittee as leader of MOSOP. The bitterness arising from the lynching of the Ogoni Four and the judicial murder of the Ogoni Nine continues to poison politics and other relationships in the 500,000-strong ethnic group. Survivors and supporters of the two groups continue to hurl insults and curses at each other at every opportunity. Outsiders can offer their sympathy and their understanding, but it is only the Ogoni who can testify about the dark underside of their revolution. The land is divided, shredded into factions of implacable enemies who are ready to do battle anywhere from the family hearth to international seminars in Brussels.

It is time for the Ogoni the reasonable majority who want a bit of peace and quiet after the many storms they have endured to start the process of true reconciliation. There are two reasons why this should be pursued urgently. First, the disagreements and conflicts notwithstanding, it is only the Ogonis who can determine their own destiny. People can choose their friends, their neighbours and even their countries, but they cant choose their kinsmen. The Ogonis like other groups are condemned to being brothers. Second, the Ogonis are in imminent danger of losing the attention and sympathy of the world. "Compassion fatigue" is setting in.

The only good news from the Oputa proceedings is that Shell and Ogoni leaders have reached some kind of agreement to start talking. This is the path of wisdom. One hopes that elements in the extremist minority who are wedded to war will not scuttle this process of possible rapprochement. Shell is not my favourite multinational, but if it wants to make peace, invest in infrastructure and play a role in the rehabilitation of the victims, it should be encouraged. Children need to go to school, youths need jobs, the sick require cheap medical attention, indigent students need scholarships.

If these will materialise from the offers of Shell and the NDDC, then perhaps the Ogoni revolution would have achieved something.