|
Renegotiate Nigeria By We
must all be grateful to the Supreme Court of Nigeria for
forcefully drawing our collective attention to the depth of
inequities of the Nigeria Legal system, and to the appalling
differences in terms of trade between broad categories of our
national communities.
That we
have been very unfairly treated as ethnic minorities of the
South (particularly the Old Eastern Nigeria flank) has never
been in doubt. That the massive exploitation of oil by the
Nigerian State leaves in its wake, horrendous environmental
devastation; or that unlike the situation in similarly endowed
areas in other parts of the world, our Niger Delta wallows in
unspeakable poverty, is a fact daily parroted by every leader
who claims to represent the totally dehumanised people of the
area.
But
somehow, they, the leaders keep hoping that by their exertions
and polite agitations, the masters of the
Nigerian State (whose stupendous wealth is the condition for
our grinding poverty) will see the illogic of their position,
and since they are all fervent Christians or Muslims, be
compelled by their conscience to redress this injustice.
I am
grateful to the Supreme Court for dispelling this illusion.
Now we know that as in all colonial situations, exploitation
and subjugation of the people of the oil producing areas is
secured both by law and by force. And that as administrator of
the internal colony of Southern Nigeria, the head of the
Nigerian State at any time, have their hands tied, and must of
necessity treat us with consummate spite.
When in
November 1999, President Olusegun Obasanjo ordered troops into
Odi and the entire community was wasted, we were perhaps moved
into conniving silence by our sense of guilt, afterall, 12
policemen had been killed by unknown youths in the area.
But the
Odi massacre was not about the killing of policemen (highly
regrettable as it was); elsewhere greater numbers of those
unfortunate Nigerians had been killed without similar
consequences! Not even when whole police stations were sacked
and the DPO killed! Odi was a warning that we must not labour
under the illusion that we are now at par with other Nigerian
communities.
Then, our
governors started talking about Resource Control, one of the
elements slated
for implementation in the brave new post-Abacha world by the
resolute brothers and sisters of the anti-Abacha Resistance.
Then, the federal government in this free and democratic
dispensation of our dreams, went to Court, led by Chief Bola
Ige, a leading light of the anti-Abacha struggle. and the
verdict of court? “The plaintiff’s case succeeds and I hereby
determine and declare that the seaward boundary of a littoral
state within the Federal Republic of Nigeria for the purpose
of calculating the amount of revenue accruing to the
Federation Account directly from any natural resources... is
the low water mark of the land surface thereof...”
In other
words, it doesn’t make historical or legal sense, to associate
a littoral state with its continental shelf, even in a
federation. But the territory contributed to the British for
the building of Nigeria, by the hitherto independent nations
of the Atlantic Coast, was not just land, it was both land and
sea.
The
treaties of 1884 signed by the Kings and Chiefs of Old Calabar
with the British, carried the sprawling Efik Kingdom, land and
water, into the Oil Rivers Protectorate, which became the
Niger Coast protectorate, the Protectorate of Eastern Nigeria
and became fully Nigerian at the Amalgamation of 1914.
And the territory superintended by the Oba of Lagos as far flung as Badagry, with diplomatic missions in Portugal (established in 1807) and Brazil (from 1830) was handed over to the British in 1861, again, land and water. We can repeat this for all the littoral nations and empires, Bonny, Opobo, Eket, Nembe, Brass, etc. At what point did Nigeria acquire an existence which was not contingent on a previously existing entity, and in a federal arrangement too.
Because
there is so much confusion, so much insecurity and it has
become clear that the polity can no longer proceed with its
untenable patchwork of social and national contradictions, the
least the Union of Niger Delta can do, is ask for Nigeria to
be renegotiated.
Those who
see salvation in the idea of an indigene of the Niger-Delta
become president of Nigeria are far off the mark. That can
only happen where the Nigerian power establishments, in which
we have no representation, permits it. That is to say, the
person who becomes president is either a stooge or a properly
motivated person who would soon learn the difference between
office and power!
What we
need is not office on existing structures; what we need is
restructuring and that must come about through negotiations.
Negotiations must give us commensurate representation in all
the facilities of state especially the military, security
agencies and the Supreme court
This
should be our agenda, our battle-cry. Being the
intervention by Etubom Bassey Ekpo Bassey, political leader,
at the meeting of the Union of Niger Delta, Port Harcourt April 2002 |