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Ever Felt Like Mortar?
Part1
By Philip Ilenbarenemen
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The Author Philip Ilenbarenemen in this articles tries to unearth how the Niger Delta people really feel and the impact the April 2007 Presidential elections will have on the oil industry in Nigeria Nigerians go to the polls in April 2007 to elect the most important persons in their country – the President and other elective officers.
Having survived an attempt by President Obasanjo’s loyalists to extend his constitutionally prescribed maximum two-terms of 4 years each in office, the candidates have all trooped into the
hustings.
Not a few Nigerians believe that their President and his acolytes are done with attempting to perpetrate his rule over the country.
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They point to the recent impeachment of several State Governors and appointment of sole administrators for the States by the President or swearing-in of pliable individuals as Governors, as a ploy by him to drive fear into his political opponents thereby creating the right atmosphere for him to hand-pick a rearguard Government to take over from him or offer him the opportunity to remain in power indefinitely under emergency rule in the country, which will be imposed to maintain law and order.
In the 46 years since Nigeria became independent, an ultra conservative feudal oligarchy with a ruthless and corrupt military rump has ruled the country with a complete disregard for the popular wish, and the oilbearing South-South region has not ruled in spite of its enormous economic and political contributions to the country not least of all as the mortar firmly holding the Nigerian building project together in one piece.
A well-respected Niger Delta political activist and lawyer once shared with me his frustration with the ignorance or feigning of it by supposedly high ranking Federal Government of Nigeria officials about the true feeling of the peoples of the Niger delta or the South-South geo-political region of Nigeria when he told me during a discussion in London, “if I were a terrorist, the first thing I would do is to blow up the lie of a statute that is in Maryland Lagos at the junction of Mobolaji Bank Anthony way and Ikorodu Road”. According to him, this statute depicts the map of Nigeria and three men in the obvious traditional attire of the Igbo, Yoruba and Hausa peoples holding it up. “The lie here is that the statute is saying that Nigeria is being propped up by these three ethnic nationalities only. This is an obvious lie and an insult to the hundreds of other ethnic nationalities that makes up Nigeria; many of, which contribute far more to the Nigerian common wealth than these loafers. This is the WAZOBIA nonsense and the neo-colonialist tripod theory”.
This hair dryer blast from this suave, urbane and usually dapper man who I can authoritatively describe as a pacifist from our earlier collaborations in the Solidarity Movement of Southern Minorities of Nigeria in London while he still lived there, alarmed me and opened my eyes to the dept of his feeling and those of many discerning peoples from the Niger delta. If a dove like this gentleman who at times walks in the corridors of power and can even be listened to by the powers that be, could harbour thoughts like this, what about the disenfranchised, marginalized and impoverished peasantry in their millions who daily face the poverty and neglect in the region? Their lot for about 50 years since oil was first struck in their abandoned back waters, has been dashed, Their hopes for the basic amenities to sustain life like, food, hospitals, shelter, portable pipe borne water, roads, electricity supplies, schools and employment as the traditional means of livelihood of the people, fishing and farming have been rendered null because the land, rivers and creeks have been polluted and denuded of life.
These people has never really experienced a people friendly government in their annals – the British colonialists were brutish to them while they exploited their resources and now the Federal government of Nigeria, another colonialist of sorts because of its composition, which is usually bereft of their own true representatives, is brutish to them as well. How else can one explain being governed without one’s consent and forced to live under the gun and jackboot of other ethnic nationalities in a federation that is supposed to comprise of States and peoples of equal status? With the people voiceless, forced out of the mainstream of normal life, made to eke out a living like scavengers, what option exists for them?
I have pondered the issues surrounding the fate of the South- South region of Nigeria - its peoples, their resources and their role in the leadership of Nigeria and my finding is that unless the people are brought back in from the cold of ostracism and deprivation into participation and inclusion – mass participation and inclusion not tokenism or cosmetic involvement similar to the tactics used by early slave traders, the region will witness cataclysmic upheavals that will be a major drain of the life-blood of the Nigerian nation; nay Africa.
The cartel of the foreign oil companies – Shell, Chevron, ExxonMobil, TotalFinaElf, Mobil Oil Producing, etc and the Federal government of Nigeria can amass any number of armies, armed with even yet-tobe- tried military ordnances and even include weapons of mass destruction; they still won’t be able to break the natural will of a people to defend their very being – their humanity.
It is no great news that 95% of Nigeria’s foreign exchange is earned from oil and the oil is gotten from the South-South region of the country neither is it news that the region has never produced a President for Nigeria – not even in the years of infamy and anomie when a cabal of corrupt, ruthless and murderous military officers ruled Nigeria like a Mafiosi family businesses did the region get to rule Nigeria. In fact, a cursory study of Nigeria would reveal that the South-South region is treated just like mortar by the powers that be without any atom of respect due it given back in appreciation.
The Compact Oxford English Dictionary of Current English, Third Edition, defines Mortar as “a mixture of lime with cement, sand and water used to hold bricks or stones together”. In civil engineering or general construction, no worthwhile building project – be it roads, bridges, dams or houses can be possible without mortar.
Nigeria is the house that Lord Frederick Lugard built in West Africa in 1914 to the glory of imperial Britain. I dare say there must be something seriously wrong with this super-structure that makes discerning Nigerians and Nigeria watchers feel lost for words to explain why this country, so wonderfully endowed by God Almighty with human and mineral resources, and potentially the greatest Black nation in the world ever, still cannot get its act together and take up its rightful place among the comity of nations. Maybe that thing is the fact that the country was never built with the welfare of the people in mind but just as a piece of British real estate albeit with a farcical unity just to keep it together for easier exploitation.
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