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THE GUARDIAN, Sunday July 7, 2013
Backlash Abraham Ogbodo
08055328079 (Sms only) abogbodo@yahoo.com
Lord, Let This Worry Pass By Warri AST week, suspected Ijaw gunmen reportedly Lnities attacked and razed down six Itsekiri commuand killed about 12 persons in Warri North local government area of Delta State. I was most frightened reading the report of the tragedy in the dailies. I prayed repeatedly that whatever that had happened should remain isolated and conclusive in its horrific scope. To project the picture further than that was to imagine a return to the dark days of war between the Ijaws and Itsekiris, and that’s mind-bending. I still do not understand why folks who are circumscribed by the same circumstances would turn on one another in order to make a nebulous point. Purportedly underlying the new offensive is the local government elections in Delta State. This has not even been properly defined by the newly inaugurated Delta State Independent Electoral Commission (DSIEC), which has not presented any roadmap regarding date, modalities and general guidelines. Why should that be an issue now? The Ijaws, who occupy four wards as against six by the Itsekiris in Warri North council area, are spoiling for power shift. They argue that the demography, which, since the creation of the council area has made the chairmanship seat an exclusive right of the Itsekiris must be renegotiated to give all stakeholders greater sense of participation. It is a legitimate aspiration. What is not legitimate and cannot be explained under any circumstance is the resort to Stone Age bestiality in driving that ambition. Were the people killed in the unprovoked attack part of the DSIEC that will conduct the council election in the state? They were probably fishermen just like their Ijaw neighbours combing the creeks in their carved out boats for enough catch to stay alive. It is not impossible that some of them did not even know the implications of a won or lost council chairmanship election. And so, why kill them like catfish? UST like child’s play, citizens of Egypt in their JSquare thousands, no millions, gathered at the Tahrir (Liberation Square in English) majority of them being very active youth population, to demand resignation of their former president, Mohammed Morsi. Morsi didn’t immediately recognise the immense and menacing force of people’s power and he remained defiant, apparently, having forgotten it was the same people’s revolt that toppled the high-handed 40-year old military regime of Hosni Mubarak and brought him into office. How soon men forget. The protesters gave him an ultimatum, but Morsi did not bulge until the military stepped in and put him under house arrest and out of circulation. The revolution may not have ended, because Morsi’s followers are still kicking, as members of his Islamic Brotherhood seem not to come to terms yet with what hit them; but with the swearing-in of Adly Mansour as interim president, it seems Morsi is gone for good, unless mother luck shines on him exceptionally. This narrative is not just interested in what happened or didn’t happen in Egypt, but more in what the situation in that country could translate to in similar climes. Egypt seems so far, yet not too far for men who have listening ears to learn hard lessons, in order to preserve themselves and preserve their democracy, or whatever form of government they claim to have in place. In their usual manner, African leaders love to play the Ostrich, they love to pretend that what is happening in another country is peculiar to such country and has nothing to teach the wider union. The African Union has denounced the events in Egypt and rejected the new leadership. It went on to suspend Egypt indefinitely over what it terms the unconstitutional change of government by the military. That is to be expected. When things hadn’t gone this bad, the AU had no response to the deteriorating political leadership in Egypt. They claim to have a peer-review mechanism in place, but would chose to look the other way until matters get worse. It was the same thing in Kenya, when post-election violence in 2007-08 claimed not less than 1,000 souls and the AU could not intervene to save those lives. And when the International Criminal Court (ICC) wanted to intervene and bring perpetrators to book, the AU said no. At its 50th anniversary summit in Ethiopia in May, the AU passed a resolution urging ICC to refer the crime against humanity cases leveled against President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy
We all know that apart from the name ‘Goodluck’ nothing else in the background of Goodluck Jonathan gave indication that he would become president of Nigeria. If he had been killed by aggrieved persons while fishing in the creeks, or moving about the swamps of Otuoke bare-footed; without sandals, would he have grown to become President today? And most probably, the Niger Delta would have lost forever the opportunity to produce the President of Nigeria. Also take the case of Papa E.K Clark. If he had been murdered like chicken, would he have waxed steadily over the decades to become ‘elder statesman and foremost Ijaw leader’ and even coming very close to being the alternate President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria? Amaechi, Dickson, Uduaghan, Imoke, Akpabio and Oshiomhole and all the big big ogas dem in Abuja were all village boys of yester years who have made it because nobody terminated their lives and aspirations over any reason. What I am saying is that there could be some leaders of tomorrow or fathers of leaders of tomorrow among the folks that were slaughtered. They did not have to die because they were Itsekiri and some Ijaw irredentists were on a callous campaign to offset the hegemony of the former in the politics of Warri North local council. It is a shame. For all you care, it is a hegemony that is of no direct or even remote benefit to the generality of the people. For instance, the fact that the State Governor, Emmanuel Uduaghan is an Itsekiri from Warri North would mean little or nothing to folks that were killed because that consanguinity might not have marked them out for any special privileges in the overall calculations. They might not have had any better access to government largesse and they could have been as aggrieved as many others including their killers. The murderers themselves do not stand to gain any direct benefit from their dastardly act. Sure, none of them has ambition to contest
the council chairmanship seat in the next election. If there was any with such ambition among the killers, something in him would have told him that the people he killed in cold blood did not have the capacity to derail or scuttle his ambition. In other words, the killers did not kill for their own sake but to serve the purpose of others who are at the moment too distant to be recognised in the calculations. I ask again: why this crude approach to issues that can be so beautifully exhausted through dialogue or peaceful contest? Even Goodluck Jonathan refused to apply this kind of tactics at the highest level. At least, he had told everybody who listened that nobody’s life was worth his ambition while jumping around the country to cultivate support for his presidential ambition in the build-up to the 2011 general election. I think that golden line can be adopted also in the interim as a golden rule, while we await the more substantive achievement of fine-tuning the political process to a level where it will become too light or transparent to sustain killers. Having made that point, it should be added that something more need to be done, to catalyse the fine-tuning process in the Niger Delta. There is always this tendency in the people of the region to forgo the substance and chase shadows. The argument that the region is marginalised is no longer tenable in the light of the current configurations. It is the only region with a whole federal ministry to itself. It also has the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), which was created by an act of parliament to specifically facilitate development in the area. Add to this the 13 per cent derivation money that states in the region receive from the central purse, the free-forall bazaar called the Amnesty Programme and finally the big fact that the country is today co-ordinated from a South-south presidential prism. There are other collateral benefits such as the headship of the petroleum ministry and the money spinning Nigeria Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA). Sincerely, there is enough, comparatively, to keep the region busy and out of trouble too for now. But there is trouble everywhere and almost at a scale that rakes up the memory of years when the configuration was not so favourable. The people appear back in Egypt after crossing the Red Sea and frustrations have begun to build again, so soon even amid unprecedented prospects. Maybe the wrong Moses was chosen in the first place to lead the exodus out of the dungeon. In fact, the ‘Moseses’ at all levels of leadership in the Niger Delta have refused to come down from the Mountain top, where they have
SUNDAY NARRATIVE Alabi Williams williams.alabi@ngrguardiannews.com 08116759790 (Sms only)
Egypt! Hard Lessons For Nigeria, Africa William Ruto back to Kenya for domestic trial. The ICC is of the view that the two men should surrender themselves for trial, but in the puerile thinking of AU leaders, Kenya has a credible judiciary that is trusted by all Kenyans and has capacity to hear and determine the cases. That is the kind of peer-reviewing AU leadership is used to, seeking to preserve leaders who may have lost touch with their people. So, suspending Egypt from the continental body is no surprise. Now, is it possible for individual countries to be circumspect enough to pick one or two lessons from the events taking place in the land of Pharaohs? I think so, because what the people of Egypt are asking for are not radically different from what other Africans are asking for from their leaders. The Egyptians broke free from the 40-year authoritarian rule under Hosni Mubarak, seeking to have a government of their own, where the rules of engagement do not preclude any group from access to good life. They voted massively in 2012 for Morsi, believing that he could work the economy, provide jobs and make life more secure. After one year, they decided to ask for returns on the mandate they voluntarily gave in 2012. They look like a people in a hurry. The events are happening so rapidly that there is little time to pause and interrogate the psychology of the Egyptian populace. They seem to have no patience with democracy and its pussyfooting, perpetually at a corner, somewhere at a curve, learning endlessly and refusing to break forth. These people will take to the streets to protest an increase in price of bread and make an issue of it. They seem to be a no-nonsense people, and if that is their nature, no one should blame them. That makes democracy a very delicate business along the Nile. Therefore, whoever the people elect to rule them should understand their sensibilities and accommodate them, but Morsi did not, himself being a learner. He was accused of excluding majority of Egyptians in favour of his Is-
lamic Brotherhood. That was dangerous. If democracy is for all, leaders should try to accommodate all, including the opposition. For example, Nigeria’s democracy is a winner-takeall affair. Some people have been outside government since 1999, having zero access to resources and government patronage and you expect them to think straight. Exclusion here is at every level and it hurts most when state institutions that should provide level-playing field help to perpetrate exclusion. It hurts badly when the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), for instance, denies the opposition access to vital information and data. It hurts when the judiciary, the final arbiter in the affairs of men panders to the vanities of men in power and refusing to dispense justice without fear or favour. It hurts when men who were ordinary yesterday become unreachable, because they won or stole some election and they begin to loom larger than life, while millions of Nigerians live in perpetual denial. But it is encouraging, that Nigerians have developed tick skin and they are willing to let democracy mature. Clearly, the problem is not so much with the people, ordinary folks, and lawabiding workmen, ever ready to queue at every election. No. It seems largely the problem of the political class. If this democracy fails, they should be fair enough to carry the blame on their heads; just the same way they are eating the resources with two hands. The military in Egypt is being blamed for subverting democracy and I do not agree. The military did not instigate the millions of people to come out and take over Tahrir Square. They stepped in to intervene when it was clear that state was on the verge of collapse. By their calling, the military have the responsibility to protect the integrity of their country. Egypt was on the verge of disintegration and the only group that could save her was the military. The hard lesson here is that countries such as Egypt, which are borrowers of democracy as a form
purportedly gone to receive the goodies on behalf of the people. They have appropriated the collective heritage for keeps and the impact of that huge theft is what is turning brothers against brothers in the region. Even the many militant leaders who fought the so-called wars of liberation are nowhere to be found. They are neither in the creeks nor on ground anywhere in the Niger Delta to take charge of the bad situation. They are up there in Abuja and all the good places in Nigeria and elsewhere, where they have built protective buffers around themselves with the common wealth stolen. This is where we are with the Niger Delta struggle. The leaders of the struggle have become con men and the betrayed people are searching frantically in all directions, say for a new hope? What do we do? There are several options, which however do not include what happened in Warri North. Instead of agonising, the region should organise for a strategic re-launch. It has to fight again but not with guns. World over, gunboat diplomacy does not offer lasting solutions. At the end of World War I, the German soldiers, including Sgt Adolf Hitler, who were returning from the fronts re-entered Berlin with loud proclamations that the fallen Germany would rise again. The country did rise as promised, but the towering national energies were wrongly channelled into arms production to begin World War II. The Great Germany went down even more rapidly than it had risen and as he agonised in the Berlin Bunker just before he killed himself, the Fuehrer, Adolf Hitler, added one line in his suicide note: “Germany shall rise again!” Indeed Germany did rise again, but not entirely by itself. The rest of the world, through the United Nations, came together to help Germany advance in a different direction. It did not rise the third time to precipitate a World War III. That indomitable German spirit which made it possible for the country to absorb the upheavals of two World wars was invested in ventures outside armament and the result today is the resilient German economy from which continental Europe derives strength. The rest of Nigeria and in fact the world should help the Niger Delta to go the way of Germany. The region is loaded with talented people. The kind of talent that could make a non-mariner to wade 120 kilometres off the coast into ocean depths of about 1000 metres without navigational aids to attack the Bonga Oil Field that is operated by Shell Petroleum Development Company. Youths and elders of the region need assurances that there are dignifying and fruitful areas outside politics that energies can be channelled. of government should learn to stick by the rules. That Nigerians are peaceful people is not license for democratic leaders to cheat them at every point. It is no license for government to continue to renege on agreements reached with Academic Staff union of universities and to continue to shortchange the educational sector. The Egyptian military, just like in Pakistan, are very powerful and without making it obvious, they serve as bulwark of their countries’ integrity. They lurk behind the scene, watching out for some gross errors. Politicians in the two countries have not come of age to be absolutely entrusted with unfettered handling of affairs. Call it diarchy or whatever it does not appear so offensive, considering that Pakistan and Egypt have both been ruled more by the military. You cannot cast off that experience in one year or a few years. Another hard lesson here is for Nigeria and some other African countries with similar experience not to take the military for granted. The people should also count well and not to be taken for granted. The budgets must work for the overall benefit of the people, not for ministers and top civil servants to continue to frustrate budgets. There must be security of life and property, not that our democratic government continues to appear helpless in the face of general lawlessness. Imagine that the military was not invited to intervene in Yobe, Borno and Adamawa states, when Boko Haram was busy planting subversive flags all over the place, then by now they would have taken over the entire Northeast. Democracy in those states would have suffered. Therefore, the military is still very relevant and should not allow themselves to be intimidated, or unduly influenced by politicians. Nigerians love democracy, but they do not trust politicians. All hands must be on deck, to save this democracy, including the military. Yet another hard lesson is for those plying politics of ethnic and religious superiority to sit down and review their hateful stance. Egypt is predominantly Muslim and they love their religion dearly. A sizeable number is Coptic Christians and on a good day, they are respected and have lived in Egypt and practiced their religion for centuries. The revolution against Morsi was motivated by a common hunger and thirst for better life for all, which the Islamists could not provide in a hurry. Majority of those who kicked Morsi out are Muslims of a liberal mode, great adherents of the faith, but we are talking development here. Let development drive our politics and not the other way round. Those who are fixated on religion and