Niger Delta Economic Self Determination Struggle Chapter 1 & 2 – Armstrong Anyanwu (PHD)

NIGER DELTA QUESTION

CHAPTER ONE:- The human tragedy called the Niger Delta question is a very ugly chapter of the Nigerian history. It is a tale of the abuse and mismanagement of a people’s resource heritage and the human erosion that is always the concomitant of a short-sighted exploitation.

Despite its peculiar contributions to the economy of this country, the Niger Delta region remains the most abused victim of the unrighteous order of the Nigerian political establishment. About 90% of Nigeria’s foreign exchange earning accrues from hydrocarbon deposit from the Niger Delta.

Sometimes, mankind has some of the ostrich in him. As the ostrich buries its head in the sand, the same way the Nigerian political establishment and multinational oil companies shut their eyes to the forces of injustice and the structural inequality of the Nigerian society as though they do not see how they have debased the people of Niger Delta region to a level lower than the most vicious animal by making money at the price of men’s souls.

A nation that claims to lead and to liberate the race of Africa, yet its citizenry is bound in chains of oppression and neglect. What an obviously fraudulent claim?

Nigeria’s Niger Delta is the world’s third largest wetland eco-system after Mississippi and Holland, but the region is blessed with one of nature’s most priced minerals: hydrocarbon, the highest contributor to Nigeria’s federation account.

Oil was discovered in Oloibiri, in the present Bayelsa State in 1956, yet it has not translated into the many benefits it guarantees its owners the world over. The government and the oil companies have fallen short of providing the people with the basic necessities of life.

Oil has built new cities in distant uplands. It has constructed dual-carriage high ways in rocky terrains, as well as made mega-dollar billionaires of persons who ordinarily are not better than those from whose immediate communities the oil is obtained. In all these, the government remains pacifist as if nothing is happening whereas the real owners of the resources wallow in abject poverty and neglect.

The only thing the people gain from hydrocarbon deposit which they do not share with any part of this nation, is the water pollution, the land pollution and the diverse kinds of environmental degradation and depletion of the eco-system.

Putting into consideration the fact that oil is a depleting asset, and oil exploration and exploitation are activities which take away all but restore nothing, consider the fact that if the region is not sustain-ably developed now that the oil wells are flowing, there is no doubt that it will be abandoned when it is worthless in terms of economic contributions, than now that it constitutes a very strong economic entity in the federation.

Many Nigerians have grown rich at the expense of the Commonwealth of Niger Delta people. Oil is at the center of the whole trouble in Nigeria.

The Nigerian civil war, the successive military coups, the rat race for election into the presidency and the national assembly, the desire for tenure elongation and the partition of Niger Delta oil blocs among politicians and retired army Generals, are all about who controls the oil wealth of the Niger Delta.

Tom O’Neil, in his article captioned “the paradox of oil wealth in Nigeria” painted a true picture of the Niger Delta question.  He said that “oil fouls everything in southern Nigeria.

It spills from the pipelines, poisoning soil and water. It stains the hands of politicians and Generals, who siphon off its profits. It taints the ambition of the young who will try everything to scoop up a share of the liquid riches, fire a gun, sabotage a pipeline, and kidnap a foreigner”

Also speaking on the Niger Delta question, one of Nigerian’s most celebrated journalists, Mr. Ray Ekpu, observed that “The Niger Delta is a region that is both rich and poor, whose squalor is the fallout of its splendor, whose poverty is the product of its wealth”

NIGER DELTA ECONOMIC SELF-DETERMINATION

STRUGGLE

CHAPTER TWO:- The credit for being the first person to condemn the human tragedy called the Niger Delta question, in revolutionary terms, goes to late Isaac Jasper Adaka Boro, a chemistry student of the University of Nigeria Nsukka,

who was agitated by the negative environmental externalities orchestrated by the exploration and exploitation activities of Shell, the major multi-national oil company operating in the Niger Delta region at the time.

On 23 February 1966, Isaac Adaka Boro, led a band of 159 Ijaw youths of his Niger Delta Volunteer Service to fight for freedom from internal imperialism, that would translate to the establishment of Niger Delta Republic.

Boro’s military resistance collapsed within twelve days because it could not withstand the superior fire power of the federal forces. Boro and his men were tried for treason, found guilty and sentenced to death on 21 June 1966. This was the beginning of militancy in the Niger Delta.

When the Nigeria civil war started in 1967, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, perceived that Nigeria would have to reconcile with the idea of losing the support of the people of Rivers State to Biafra, if Adaka Boro and his men were killed or remained in prison by reason of the death sentence. Gen Gowon heeded the advice of the sage, and went ahead to release Boro and his men.

The same year, Rivers State was created as a palliative to woo the region’s people to join the federal forces to prosecute the civil war.

Isaac Boro died in active service, yet mysterious circumstances on 20 April 1968, after serving the Nigerian army faithfully and gallantly. He did not live to tell the  story of this struggle. Unfortunately, since the days of Boro, till date, nothing has changed,

The Niger Delta people are still in bondage because the federal government has refused to change her hateful and predatory attitude towards the people of the region and their environment.

 In the nineteen nineties, there was a very deliberate and articulate intellectual response to the Niger Delta economic self-determination struggle.

The masterminds and guiding spirits of what was indeed a true satyagraha (non-violent civil resistance), were the late environmental activist; Ken Saro Wiwa and all the exponents of the Kaiama declaration, prominent among them was late Barr. Oronto Douglas and many others.

Whereas the international community applauded the non-violent Kaiama declaration as a civilized method of protest by an indigenous people, and an attempt to bring the government to a negotiating table, the military government of that dispensation, misinterpreted the people’s intention as being revolutionary, even when no single member of the movement had any revolutionary intention.