Date Published: 05/27/09
Niger Deltans as inconvenient obstacles
By Idang Alibi
Last week, while contributing to a debate on the floor of the Federal House of Representatives on the raging military action in the Niger Delta region in which over 100 civilians are so far said to have been killed, thousands displaced, some military officers and men killed and a score reported to be missing in action, a member of the House from Kebbi State, Bala Na’Allah, made a statement that will surely rank as one of the most unfortunate remarks ever made in that hallowed chambers.
He said something to the effect that since Nigeria is a populous country with over 140 million people he will not mind so much if the 20 million people of the Niger Delta who are giving the rest of the nation so much ‘headache’ in the exploitation of crude oil in the place are exterminated so that the rest of Nigeria can have peace.
When he was prevailed upon to recant this unfortunate outburst, Na’Allah made an even graver mistake. He said what he said was a parliamentary joke. Whether what he said was in earnest or a mere joke, Na’Allah’s words will surely live to haunt him for the rest of his life. In fact, that contribution will not only torture his conscience for the rest of his days on earth, it is like words engraved in stone that will surely outlive him. Some one someday will live to quote it to Na’Allah’s children and children’s children.
Smart lecturers teaching Social Science courses in higher institutions of learning in the Niger Deltan region will quickly incorporate this in their lectures as evidence of the insensitivity of some Nigerians to the plight of a people whose place lays Nigeria’s golden eggs.
I love to quote that portion in the Bible which says that “From the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh”. Whether it was a slip of the tongue or a thoughtless joke, Na’Allah’s remarks represent the feeling of some Nigerians, especially among the governing class, over the trouble in the Niger Delta. Many among our ruling class see the Niger Delta agitators for a better deal as saboteurs, as irritants, and the entire people occupying the region as inconvenient obstacles obstructing the full exploitation of the crude so that there can be more money to share, or more appropriately, for looting.
When there is a disruption of oil activities in the place, what one reads about on the front pages of our newspapers is how much billions of dollars Nigeria is losing daily as a result of the barrels of crude it can not produce! No one talks about the suffering of the people from whose territory oil wealth is oozing out! Not even colonial Britain which came here on a mission of exploitation of the natives pure and simple for the development of the mother country will see things in this light. Colonial Britain would pretend or affect some concern for the humanity of the natives.
I often write that some developed industrialized countries see us Africans not as a people but as a market for their manufactured products. I will like to say here that some Nigerians see people of the Niger Delta not as aggrieved Nigerians who are complaining about decades of neglect and insensitivity to their plight but as obstacles to their full enjoyment of the bounties which nature has freely given to Nigeria.
These days when some governors and local government chairmen go home from the Federation Allocation Account Committee meetings with less allocation, they murmur openly that it is militants in the Niger Delta who are responsible for the small share they are now taking home. No one has the presence of mind to worry that something ought to be done to seriously address the cause of the militancy in the region.
People took to arms to make their point in the Niger Delta only a few years ago. The criminal elements that have given a bad name to the legitimate struggle of the region became a phenomenon even most recently. Yet some have found this as a convenient reason why the Nigerian state must deal with the Niger Delta people decisively so that they do not any more constitute an obstacle.
Many Nigerians who wield power and have the right and authority to steal the oil money have chosen to conveniently forget the ORIGINAL CAUSE of what initially started as a peaceful agitation in the Niger Delta before it became violent. Before we blame the so-called “criminal elements who have hijacked the legitimate Niger Delta struggle” let us note that when a sore is left untreated for too long, gangrene inevitably sets in an a leg that would have been healed if there had been a timely intervention may require amputation. This is what has happened in the Niger Delta. The Federal Government has allowed the open sore that is the Niger Delta to fester for too long. Instead of blaming the victims as some Nigerians are doing now, we must carpet the government for failing to seriously address the Niger Delta problem until it has now taken a life of its own..
In more civilized places where people have a conscience, the national army of a country will be most reluctant to take up arms against a region of the country and come to give daily briefing celebrating how many of the “enemies’ or ‘militants’ the army has killed each day. Each time I hear army spokesmen recounting the ‘bravery’ of its men in killing fellow civilian countrymen, I feel so ashamed of my country. How has my country degenerated to this level?
No one supports some of the criminal methods some of the militants have adopted in pressing the case for a fair deal for the region, but to say, as some do, that the Niger Deltans do not have a case, is unconscionable. The agitation in the Niger Delta is legitimate and it has only taken a violent turn because the only language our deaf and insensitive leaders understand is shouting and banging the table! We must remember that God has not been rigged out of his throne by smart Nigerian election riggers yet. He is still sitting pretty there and watching what we are doing to fellow countrymen in Nigeria.
Today, the Federal Government has won the propaganda war against the Niger Delta region. It has succeeded in getting Nigerians to blame the militants for obstructing whatever development efforts it wants to effect in the region. It has gotten Nigerians to blame the region’s governors and local government chairmen for stealing the jumbo allocations they get from the federation account when corruption is a national and not regional problem. Some of us can see that corruption or no corruption, those who hold the levers of power in Nigeria have desired and determined to develop Abuja to a world-class city and they have done so, of course, with oil money. We are pretty sure that if the Federal Government wants to, it can actually do something other than rhetoric and endless statements of intention by engaging in massive development of the Niger Delta whether the leaders of the region are corrupt or not. Abuja has the capacity to station a battalion of its soldiers to protect workers any where in the Niger Delta if it wants to build a road, bridge or anything for the people. The whole thing is the WILL finish.
The Federal Government has won the propaganda war. What some of us want is to see it win the development war. Decades of neglect of the region which requires nothing more than a Marshall Plan and action is the real cause of the many foolish things happening in the Niger Delta today. The people of Nigeria must engage in acts of massive restitution to the people of the Niger Delta for the wrong that has been done them over the years. The actions of a few criminals should not be used as an excuse to continue to visit injustice and acts of inhumanity on a people whose misfortune is that a money-spinning resource is found in their abode. It is not right at all.
