RIVERS STATE AS UNDERDOG OF NIGERIA POLITICS
O. JASON OSAI argues that the state deserves more than peripheral attention
Following the Buhari/Idiagbon coup in December 1983 and the subsequent war against indiscipline (WAI), Engr Victor Masi was virtually declared the corrupt officer of the Federal Republic while President Shagari and Vice President Ekwueme were declared saints. I cried foul and opined that Masi was so treated because Rivers State is the underdog of Nigeria politics. I furthered that the Buhari/Idiagbon junta did not touch Shagari, a Fulani, neither did it touch Ekwueme, an Igbo, because both came from major ethnic groups that possess a vociferous voice in the affairs of the nation.
The sordid scenario prosaically painted above was poetically portrayed in my 1994 poem titled “A Disturbing Pattern”, which states that “My Victor…is anguished/The only one vanguished/At the kangaroo grill/In the central seat/While the rechristened Saul sent to Steel/Stole and walked down easy street”. Given my kinship with Masi, the view was seen as biased
Babangida entered the scene and retained Professor Tam David-West as Petroleum Minister. Based on spurious allegation of a gift of golden wristwatch and a cup of tea, David-West was sent to Bama prisons while those from other ethnic groups who brazenly looted the treasury walked home free. Again, Navy Captain Ibim Princewill was sacked as Governor of Cross River State on very flimsy reason and that was the first time a governor under a military administration was so treated. The double commonality of these two cases is that their indictment took place under military administration, which was very unusual given the rabid rate of roguery and robbery during that administration; also, both David-West and Princewill are Rivers men of Kalabari extraction. When I raised the same point of Rivers State being the butt of Nigeria politics, it attracted the attention it deserved. However, no concerted effort was made to protest such ignominious treatment.
Today, Bauchi and Borno are burning; “the farmlands of Benue and Plateau/Are soaked in the blood of not a few/Dozens of cadavers, blood-splattered/Are recklessly scattered/On the streets of Yoruba/And the bushes of Taraba”. The Middle Belt has long been a theater of the bizarre bazaar of bounty-hunting bandits. In the Southeast, a renegade security network has virtually brought the otherwise thriving economy to its knees. In Ebonyi, the acclaimed “HQ of Islam in the Southeast”, bandits walked into a church and slaughtered everyone therein. Yet, there is no declaration of state of emergency in these areas. Why? Because the people have put their diversity in check and forged a unity that has put the operators of the Nigerian system in check.
Conversely and rather sadly, the Babelian nature of Rivers State and our inability to transcend petty differences have led to our vulnerability; this is exacerbated by our characteristic docility and gullibility. These have made Rivers State a ready prey for exploitation by the operators of this amalgam called Nigeria.
An Egbema aphorism holds that “palm kernel pomade runs where the skull is low”. The paradox of Rivers State is that it is the hub of the mainstay of the Nigerian economy yet the people live in abject poverty. Their traditional occupations have been rendered unprofitable by pollution and dangerous by Fulani herders who rape, maim and kill farmers with impunity. Many families live in mud-and-thatch houses within five meters of live oil wells yet they are not able to feed their children or send them to school. Victims of the weaponization of poverty, they are not able to organize and raise a voice.
Today, the democratic structures of Rivers State have been dismantled and a Sole Administrator appointed; he is riding roughshod by decimating what is left of the democratic institutions while insolently claiming to have transformed Rivers State. At the national level, a 19-man House Committee has been set up for oversight functions. These are aberrations in a democratic dispensation; they justify Rivers State being referred to as “Colony on the Coast”.
In the Babelian Syndrome that typifies Rivers State, there has been a well attended and widespread “RETURN FUBARA” procession, which was quickly followed by an orchestrated counter procession that shamelessly proclaimed the opposite. Many well-meaning groups have sprouted from the nooks and crannies of the State protesting the unconstitutional act. Yet, a Presidency that is smitten by the Iguana Syndrome is listening to the choreographed “Aye” by a heavily funded micro-minuscule minority. What a people! What a system!!
In my early thirties, I was the spokesman of Egbema Youths Association (EYA), which peacefully paralyzed the operations of Nigeria Agip Oil Company (NAOC) in Egbema for two weeks until NAOC yielded to its demand for electricity, pipe-borne water, school buildings, scholarships and roads. The outcome of that first community action against a corporate multinational in the history of old Rivers State was such that a 1997 OP-ED in The Guardian rated Egbema as “the most infrastructurally developed community in rural Nigeria”. Thereafter, I was elected Secretary-General of Association of Mineral Producing Areas of Rivers State (AMPARS). Under the leadership of the legendary Chief HJR Dappa-Biriye, AMPARS audaciously demanded the creation of “a commission for the development of the oil producing communities of the Niger Delta” from the Buhari/Idiagbon junta. That effort was sustained into the Babangida Administration and it fructified in the creation of Oil Mineral Producing Areas Development Commission (OMPADEC), which morphed into Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC). Now in my mid-seventies, all I can do is write and speak, when invited.
Wake up! Rivers people!! Wake up from your slumber!!!
Professor Osai writes from Rivers State University of Science and Technology, Port Harcourt
