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Author: Okah Ewah Edede
Posted to the web: 2/10/2007 8:22:18 AM

NIGER DELTA: A TERRIBLE BEAUTY

Lush vegetations crown the land and serene creeks crisscrosses through it like plaited patterns on a maiden's hair. The Niger and, the Benue River, merges into one and flows into her bowel. Yes, in her bowel lies a great deposit of thick black liquid which the world treasure like diamond and gold. Her terrain, her treasures, is her beauty. Her creeks, her buried essence are terrible.

   The lure for the Niger-Delta is the lust of greed which spans decades. The restive spirit of the Niger- Delta's is a quest for survival and emancipation. The creeks of the Delta greases the wheel of the Nigerian economy, yet, the very people who put food on the table of others are left to scavenge like dogs in privation, penury and abject despondency. They are made to behold the magnificent splendour of cities like: Minna, Abuja, Jos etc – splendours built with the wealth under their soil – yet, the creeks, their terrain, is the epitome of a modern stone age. These make them to bleed in their hearts.

   The battle for the redress of this perennial injustice is as long as the birth of Independent Nigeria. The gulf and parallel between the yore eras and the contemporary era of the Izzon restiveness is the A.K47. The likes of Adaka Boro, Dennis Feberesima, Ken Saro Wiwa and, the not too distant, Daddy ken of Odi, is that they never had nor intended to use the vibrations of the A.K47 and GPMG weapons of limited destruction, yet, the federal might of the central government was slammed hard against them. They were hounded, imprisoned, hanged, and their villages leveled or, an Army of occupation was deployed to invade their relative tranquility. They were treated like third class citizens or at best, like polytechnic Nigerians – the younger ones learnt from their mistakes.

   Elections came, and silhouette politicians with delinquent and Kindergarten mentality armed the volatile youths with Kalashnikovs and their restive fury knew no bound! At long last, the politics of A.K47 has empowered them and so, the aged quest for survival took on an awesome dimension. The ever crafty politicians seeing that they have created a ghoulish monster decided to starve off the riffled youths of their fund, but the ingenious youths resorted to oil gardening to lubricate their business of restiveness. Today, the 'Kalashnikoved' youths of the Niger-Delta are the guerilla rebels of Nigeria!

   Now, the ethnocentric politics of supremacy and the holocaust syndrome has blinded the sapient leaders of the North from seeing the panacea to this imbroglio: resource control or the fifty percent derivation option. I said the North because it is a public secret that the central government's combative stance against fiscal federalism, resource control or the 50 percent derivation option is due to its desire to protect and pacify the tender feelings of the Northern oligarchy. What of the South-south? Won't their own feelings be pacified too? After all, they are the owners of the said resources! If only the North will support the other regions of the country to give the Niger-Delta any of these options, then restive youths of that region will cease harassing the whole of Nigeria and the international community. Rather, they will turn their seething anger against their own ethnic elders if they fail to develop the creeks with the resources at their control

   The Niger-Delta as a whole is one warring region. This has nothing to do with Asari Dokubo ar the Iyaw nation. From Choba to Rumuekpe, the restive spirit boils; from Amasoma to Ogoniland, the youths clutches A.K47's; from Jones creek to Odidi, the politics of Kalashnikov reigns supreme; from Egbema to Ogbakiri, the youths relishes the macabre dance of spitting leads. Wherever you go in the Niger-Delta you will encounter belligerent militants who are easily excited into violence because of the anger and hunger gnawing in the psych.

   No matter what actions the central government takes, if it fails to address the injustice prevalent in the region, it will always boomerang and plunge the region into greater anarchy. The Niger-Delta is a seething cauldron of ironies: no matter how bestial the government treats them, the youths always retaliate with their own brutality and insanity. No matter how many expatriates are kidnapped and taken hostages, the West will always hunger and lust after the oil beneath their sod! This scenario is a no win situation. The Niger-Delta: a land of terrible beauty – the land of the Izzons.

 

By Okah Ewah Edede

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