Supreme Court as Final Oppressor
By
Senator David Dafinone could not have captured it more: “It is still midnight in the Niger Delta!” When the writer Karl Maier toured the country and wrote his very insightful book, his summation was that it is midnight Nigeria, The House Has Fallen (Nigeria In Crisis). He was simply paraphrasing Professor Chinua Achebe.
Senator Dafinone, president of the Union of Niger Delta, the umbrella organisation of all the social political groups in that region, in his first reaction to the
Supreme Court judgement as published in Sunday Vanguard this weekend, epitomised the general feeling of bewilderment and distraught now pervading this oil bearing
region.
For them, Achebe is right: “This is an example of a country that has fallen down; it has collapsed. This house has fallen.” For them the house of wealth God blessed
them with has metamorphosed into a curse.
Yes, those whose interests have been well served by the judgment have hailed it, some even citing a similar judgment in the United States, which the lead justice even
lays so much credence on to arrive at the judgement which enthrones the omnibus Federal Government as the sole owner of adjoining seas to the eight littoral states.
It is convenient now to forget that in the United States there is no dictatorial law which vests all mineral oil on the federal authority. There, the reverse of the
situation in Nigeria, obtains. Owners of land on which say crude oil or gold are found are the owners. Tax payment is their only obligation. Since no single person
can be said to own land beyond the low waters into the sea, the said judgment can then be said to be right and equitable. But our situation is different. The Federal
Government by our constitution owns even the very breathe of the people; owns all the mineral resources not just in the Niger Delta but indeed all over the
federation. What the littoral states were asking for was that since the constitution made no demarcation between off-shore and on-shore in ordering that 13 per cent
of revenue from mineral resources should be paid to the sources or states where they are derived, the Federal Government should obey the constitution and pay it the
full 13 percentage entitlements.
Greed for cheap money and the fact that crude oil is found mainly in the minority states of the Niger Delta which has no rating with the Ota farmer who now occupies
Aso Rock, was the reason for going to court.
The Supreme Court has simply helped him manufacture an alibi. The court has sided with the oppressors of the Niger Delta. Hence, one is tempted to ask if the judgment
would have been the same where the oil found in the core Northern states or even the Afenifere stronghold. The Niger Delta people will be the greatest fools if they
once again vote en masse for this president that hates them so much.
April 2002