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Author: Okah Ewah Edede
Posted to the web: 4/20/2006 1:23:44 PM

BEYOND ELECTIONS: NIGER DELTA IN PERSPECTIVE

The impasse in the Niger Delta should be a source of concern to discerning Nigerians vis-à-vis the post 2007 era. This should be so because in Nigeria, elections always signal the process of grotesque mutation, ghoulish metamorphosis and inhuman transformations. Keen observers of the Nigerian dynamics would know that the post 1999 years and the post 2003 era were not the same vis-à-vis the anarchy in the Niger Delta.

     The development of violence in the creeks of the Izzon is the mirror of the nurturing of anarchy in Nigeria. The whole thing started with the cults. Before 1999, the business of freedom fighting and territorial emancipation was the prerogative of intellectuals. The battles were fought in the realm of inks and prints; and in the world of spicy speeches. Then, the quest for a fair deal by the Niger deltans was a combat fought in conferences and forums amidst lengthy ties, two-piece suits, briefcases, stack of papers and pens. At that time, the Ak47 was a police instrument of tyranny and oppression.

    Then came 1999, and the mis-educated campus cultists proliferated the formation of copy cults in the streets, and jobless miscreants became members of elite gangs affiliated to tertiary cults. Politician heaved a sigh of relieve because, aha… they now had an army to recruit, armed with dangerous weapons. The post 1999 era saw little violence because politicians, as of then, have not assumed the awesome personality of ethically monocle anarchic democrats. Then, they were still busy savouring the taste of political and economic power. Those who lost elections were impatiently waiting for 2003 – the year of 'no rule' political pugilism.

    Then came 2003 in haste, and the incumbents went wacko. They had to remain in power by all means and at all cost. They had to call into active duty their reserve infantry of street cultists. Ak47s were ample and were freely distributed. 'Degbam' and 'Dewell' became political samurais; Icelanders and Greenlanders became renegade armies; Vikings, Black Axe, KKK, Buccaneers and the Mafia confraternities all became political militias. The era of the Kalashnikovs have arrived, and docile cultists became freedom fighters.

    The elections of 2003 came and went, and cultists had a field day. After the elections, with so many Ak47s at their disposal, the cultists turned on themselves and engaged themselves in a 'no retreat' battle for supremacy. This battles wasn't limited to the streets, villages, and creeks of the Niger Delta. It was vast, spanning Enugu, Ebonyi, Anambra, Plateau, Imo, and the entire littoral states. In the littoral states, it was fought by the street cults and their campus progenitors. In the inland states, the tertiary campuses were turned to Angola and Sudan. Cultists and quasi-cultists fought themselves with the ammunitions politicians bought for them. Men slept with one eye open, and the streets became cemeteries. As for the campuses, coffin makers moved their shops to the hostels.

    Then the federal government brokered a peace deal between two cult lords, Asari Dokubo and Ateke Tom. Now, with the vast sum of money the government paid them, the cult lords transformed themselves into freedom fighters, and took the quest for emancipation from the realms of pen and paper, into the plane of Ak47 and youth restivity. Youth restiveness became a way of gaining ballyhoo popularity and ethnic acceptance. The politics of Ak47 orchestrated by anarchist politicians gave birth to the economics of Kalashnikovs been powered by anarchist cultists cum freedom fighters.

    Mercantile cultists of the Niger Delta are today the emancipators of the region. The Nigerian state, especially the Northern elements, should be held responsible for allowing this scenario to materialize. If only the government had been more reasonable and sympathetic to the Niger Delta question, criminal minded cultists wouldn't have transformed into liberators. They would have been chilling in some slimy dungeon somewhere.

    Now 2007 is around the corner, and our anarchic democrats want to perpetuate themselves in power by scheming for a third term. If second term and its attendant desperation brought us this ghoulish mutation, then this writer wonders what a third term would bring? May be by post 2007, our present day cultist guerrilla insurgents will metamorphose into a standing army, and Biafra be reborn.

    Please Mantu, don't be the agent of doom. Please, we do not want a third term. Second term is enough headaches already.

 

By Okah Ewah Edede

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