Warri: A just cause derailed

By

Mike Ikhariale

Giving the gaping injustices and prolonged neglect that have been contemptuously perpetuated by those who exploit the wealth of the oil-rich Niger Delta over the years, it did not require a rocket scientist to predict that that part of the country is a huge active volcano simply waiting to explode. But what was not expected is the recent and senseless turning of the same angst on themselves while their actual and perceived enemies scornfully watch them unwittingly undermine their own cause through the mindless destruction of the very moral high grounds on which the original justification of the struggle was founded. For this reason, the case of the Niger Delta is, to my mind, tragic and wholly regrettable.

 Just about three weeks ago on this same page we touched on the vexed issue of the “Delta Question” and concluded by calling on the federal government, the lead agency through which the oil-related problems of the area emanate, to swing into action and commence both qualitative and quantitative restitutive actions in the region, be it through new and meaningful derivation regimes or effective institutional avenues like NDDC. What we failed to say or took for granted there is the reality that, in most cases, oppressed people by their misperception of their circumstances, do often postpone their liberation day and, indeed, worsen their miseries.

Rather than task research scholars to be concentrating on problematic themes like the policy and constitutional factors of oppression and man’s inhumanity to man, it appears to me in the light of several telling examples, that a study of the psychology of the oppressed may well be a necessary adjunct to any meaningful intellectual inquiry as to why some groups succeed in oppressing other groups and, for so long, and while other groups seem to be fair game for others. History is replete with cases of victimised peoples who further compounded their misfortunes by their failure to resist the temptation to cut each other down just when victory appears imminent. 

The Jews, for example, by their mutually treacherous acts made their journey from the slavery in Egypt nearly forty years longer than it would have been. It is also on record that but for the folly of some of them, the holocaust they suffered under the Nazists would not have been that outrageous. Let us not forget that but for the collusion of black slave hunters, the slave trade by white people would have been less devastating; and but for the treachery of fellow slaves when they got to the Americas, it would not have required a modern-day Martin Luther King to have to battle it out in the streets of Harlem and Montgomery nor would it have been necessary for him to delve into the now famous “I have a dream” call in order to end the evil of racism in America.

We cannot easily forget how the same black people for whom Mandela and other activists spent all their lives in the struggle, including 27 years in Roben Island, almost thwarted the termination of apartheid by the needless “Black-on-Black” violence initiated by the so-called Inkatha Freedom Movement under Chief Buthelezi.  When it was certain that freedom was coming to black South Africans after many centuries of racial injustice, they decided to imposed mayhem on themselves, a development which only succeeded in giving meaning to the claim of the minority white oppressors that the blacks cannot be trusted to govern themselves successfully. And indeed, they almost ruined the liberation effort for which so much sacrifices in lives and property and indeed, dignity, have been expended. How can one possibly ignore the fact the Palestinians are still in deep trouble today simply because when it seemed that victory was certain, they strangely embarked on meaningless and bitter internal factional fighting. The recent carnage in Warri only serves to remind us of these tragic developments in history in which the oppressed carelessly gave more weapons to their oppressors.

There is no doubt that the struggle for the restoration of the Niger Delta is a just one. The likes of Ken Saro Wiwa merely put the matter some notch up on the agenda and no one was going to ignore them without committing a heinous crime against humanity. Yours sincerely has spent much of his adult research life on these problems; and for that, and like many others, had unduly suffered a great deal in the Nigerian system that does not reckon with these who tell the truth. In fact, we were endangered specie. Yet, the struggle was worth the sacrifices as it has since acquired friends from all over the country and indeed, all over the world.

As God would have it, things started getting easier for Deltans, when, for the first time, they got elected a Governor, in the person of Chief James Ibori, someone who truly identifies with the parameters of the struggle and who has, accordingly, staked so much within the political system just to see to the actualisation of concrete solutions to the lingering problems of the area. It cannot be better. Just when it now seem some answer to the problems have been found, and indeed, everyone from the centre to the periphery, is prepared to take them on, internal divisions are threatening to reverse these solid gains which the governor and a host of other Deltans and their sympathisers, home and abroad, have laboured for during all these dark and polluted years by local hoodlums engaged in some in-fighting over what they perceive as spoils of war i.e., local governments. With AK47s in their possession, they no longer hear the voices of reason. They have abandoned the struggle and embarked on senseless vandalism, kidnapping, arson and sundry acts of communal criminality.

There is no reason under the sun for the turmoil now in Warri other than the same logic that pitiably postponed the sufferings of the Jews, the South Africans, the Palestinians and other oppressed groups. Who would be talking of socio-economic development in the area when guns are booming endlessly? Here is where they got it all wrong. 

Those who truly understand the depth of the problems of the Delta must weep over the havoc that have been wrought there lately by groups who have mistaken their roles in society. I have nothing but contempt for those who armed them; they are societal letdowns. Without peace, the Delta is in for some real hardship and the earlier this is understood the better for all.