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Author: Okah Ewah Edede
Posted to the web: 7/5/2007 9:32:12 AM

THE ROOT OF REALITY: IN DEFENCE OF MILITANCYThe proximate encounter I had with death while driving through the Port Harcourt – Warri axis of the pot-hole ridden East-West road penultimate Saturday night brought to my mind the timeless inscriptions of Laura Shane in Endless River. In that piece, Shane had written: “Laugh at tyrants and the tragedy they inflict. Such men welcome our tears as evidence of subservience, but our laughter condemns them to ignominy.” These words, by Shane, are true, and the experiences of man through the ages have given prophetic powers and immortality to them. The effect of poor leadership and the systematic neglect of the Niger delta by successive governments made the creek dwellers lugubrious and lachrymose. The gluttonous mastication of their wealth – without regards for their plights – by the Nigerian system and its foreign collaborators, lead the beleaguered people into a loose of faith in the abilities of politicians and spiced words to change their fortune. It is a fact that, at the point where hope and reason part, lies the spot where anarchic madness gets a start and picks a fight with injustice. The congenital cum environmental propensity and predilection of our effete leaders and their senile political and economic advisers nearing their dotage to perpetuate anguish and wickedness in the Niger delta have lead to the frantic activities of militancy and hostage-taking in that region. Today, the compulsion for mayhem in the creeks has taken the frenetic form of insectile frenzy. This is so because need fosters frustration; frustration grows into anger; anger gives birth to hatred; hatred ignites violence – and violence sometime soothes. Now, the bromidic clichés and histrionics of the controllers of the Nigerian system have instilled a fundamentalist’s form of vigilant perspicacity on the corroded psych of the average creek inhabitant. The aborigines of the mangrove now perceive the acts and languages of our leaders to be totally fraudulent and fallacious, – to the average swamp man, a flowing agbada and a big, fat stomach represents the effigy of shysters and pseudo puritans. This notion is not totally incorrect. Every discerning Nigerian will agree that the sleek pontifications of our governments are like the profane outbursts of heretic heathens involved in ebulliently ecstatic orgies and nihilistic rituals of superfluous ecclesiastics. Though it is factual that the voice of deceit is legion, it is also a truism that the sight of the vigilant is keen. The Izzon youths and other swamp residents noticed the comedies of the government and took proper actions. But because the government’s leadership styles were fearsome, oligarchic, jihadic and despotic, they thought the docile youths who domicile in the swampy region could do nothing but to importune God for cosmic intervention. But they were wrong. One cannot instruct the Python to spare the hare, for a crocodile acting as crocodiles must is not a vice. I see nothing wrong in MEND lifting its ban on hostage-taking and militant activities. We all know that storms do not respond to heartfelt pleas, neither does the words of men calm the seas. Man must do what man must do; man must take appropriate actions to reshape his circumstances. In my humble opinion, this is what the Egbesu warlords are doing – they are redirecting their destiny. It is truly sad that our leaders have allowed power and ill-gotten wealth to make them torpid, phlegmatic and ludicrously autocratic. When fastidious leaders flood their cabinets with mercantile sycophants as aides and advisers, they end up making plethora emendations of no value to worthless and archaic policies. Their erratic and sporadic fulminations, and their power inebriation – cumulatively – have lead to an ineluctable disease of militancy and hostage-taking ravaging the creeks today. Isn’t it sad and ironic that today militants are now the equestrian knights fighting the cause of the people! On a final note, it is advisable for our leaders to realize that when they vacate the urban dipsomania of power, they will definitely go back to their figurative farms to rusticate sequestered like hermits. At this point, if they had failed in launching noble endeavours, they flee from peace of mind and remain in the dark alleys of dreaded introspection for ever – this is an immutable law of life.By Okah Ewah Edede 08050882456 mr.okahewahedede@yahoo.com