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B N W: Biafra Nigeria World News |
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Nigeria's growing incoherence
THE First World War began in 1914, the year Frederick Lugard amalgamated the Northern and Southern Protectorates, to create present-day Nigeria. The spark that lit the conflagration of the war was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo. They were killed by ethnic Serbian nationalists. Any discerning Nigerian would have been worried sick lately about our own tinderbox and just whether somebody might ignite the fuse that leads to a blow-out from which the entity called Nigeria might never recover. The signs are there, staring us in the face: the rule of law has taken flight; popular discontent is welling up; ethnic fissures are daily being aggravated into chasms. Nigeria is adrift, notwithstanding the semblance of government.
In two days, it will be Nigeria's Independence Day. But neither in our hearts, nor in our actions will the occasion witness celebratory fireworks and the popping of champagne. Even those in government know it. Except for contract award purposes, no real meaning will be attached to the occasion. It will be a needless opinion poll to conduct. Yet, if anyone doubted the prevailing attitude of Nigerians toward Nigeria, let him seek out the people's views, from the four directions of the winds, on how and what they feel about October 1. Indeed, many will be angered by the question. There will be more people scrambling to eke out an increasingly gruesome living, than would bother whether there is some holiday to mark the nation's birth.
For several years running, various governments have peddled the alibi of frugality as their reason for having low-key October 1 celebrations. They also, in moments of frankness, admit that it would be obscene to mount a parade of brassbands when the majority of the people are wallowing in abject poverty. The underscore to the latter point, of course, is the equally sad fact that, in spite of their acknowledgement of the country's massive economic challenges, the various governments have failed to lift the burden of poverty off Nigerians. Yearly, our ranking slides on the human development index.
Elaborate celebrations were anathema during the military regimes post the Second Republic. Understandably, having seized power by coups, the regimes were mortified by thoughts of dissident soldiers mobilising during such military parades and celebrations, to oust the sitting junta. Aside their political and economic mismanagement, that was how low-key celebrations on October 1 gained currency and implanted in the people's minds a diminution of the worth of Independence Day. In its place, there arose a celebration of military adventurism and therefore personal ego trips by respective military governments. Such was the case under General Ibrahim Babangida that August 27, the anniversary of his ouster of Major-General Muhammadu Buhari, became more important than October 1, with many fundamental political changes - such as the creation of new states - being announced on August 27.
This week, oil prices hit $50 per barrel, and Nigeria was fingered as contributory to the spiralling cost, on account of disruptions to oil production in the Niger Delta region owing to the activities of insurgents who have now banded into the Niger Delta Peoples' Volunteer Force. The occurrences in the Niger Delta should be of interest, less for the impact on crude prices, than for their potential to accentuate the burgeoning troubles with the Nigerian nation. Up until a few weeks ago, Asari Dokubo and Ateke Tom were dismissed offhandedly as cultists. Now, the international news media, for which the unfolding scenario is hot potato, have upgraded their status to that of insurgents and rebels.
On Monday, THE GUARDIAN published a page three news story sourced from Reuters, which had a satellite phone interview with Asari Dokubo. According to Asari, "We have decided to declare Operation Locust Feast, which will cover the whole Niger-Delta. It is going to be an all-out war against the Nigerian State." He called for the convocation of a sovereign national conference at which the Ijaws will either secure political reforms or secede from Nigeria. "We were forced into Nigeria by the British colonialists. We are not Nigerians...there is no such nation as Nigeria," Asari told Reuters. Add to Asari's fulmination the comments by Ralph Uwazuruike, leader of the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), who told the SUNDAY INDEPENDENT that "the only solution to Nigeria's problem is the Soviet Union solution. Any ethnic group that feels it can be on its own, let it go." The MASSOB leader queried: "People say one indivisible Nigeria; what makes it indivisible? Is it because some people are cheating with the name?" Both Asari and Uwazuruike are graduates. In fact, the MASSOB leader is a lawyer and warns that, "to use the charge of treason to scare me away from what I am doing is nonsense". But while Asari is already waging an armed struggle, Uwazuruike is for non-violence. Either way, they are representative of the creeping forces that are tearing at the heart of the Nigerian nation.
It would be a grave error of judgement to dismiss these potentially destabilising forces as the propulsions of cranks. While President Olusegun Obasanjo is playing Tito, others are either contemplating or seeking to actualise a Gorbachev role for him. After inventing Perestroika, an audacious reform agenda, Gorbachev watched as the Soviet behemoth disintegrated and he slipped into history. There is a deja vu feeling about the Niger Delta Volunteer Force. Almost 15 years ago at about Christmas time in December 1989, news broke that a certain rebel group led by one Charles Taylor had launched an attack against the government of Samuel Doe. Each time the BBC's Elizabeth Blunt interviewed Taylor by satellite phones, which were uncommon at the time, the rebel leader felt oxygenated. Military hardware and logistic support poured in from all kinds of sources as Taylor pushed towards Monrovia. The rest, they say, is history, but of a brutal variety. Liberia is yet to recover from the savagery of the rebellion that culminated in a civil war, while Taylor, a murderer, war criminal and diamond thief, is now in exile in Calabar, Nigeria.
The analogy does not lie in the fact that the Delta Volunteer Force may attempt a foolhardy push to take over Abuja and Aso Rock, because that is not their objective. Theirs would seem to be more limited but portentous nevertheless. Arms dealers world-wide are forever shopping for clients. And it wont be long before they reach barter agreements with the Delta Volunteer Force, to take oil while they supply them with military hardware with which they would foment more trouble, defend whatever tract of land that is in their possession and ward off Nigerian troops now seeking to stamp their authority on the country's territorial integrity. Such trade-off explains the survival of rebel groups around the world and the prolongation of certain conflicts. The prevailing situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo is fittingly illustrative of this.
The lesson, therefore, is to recognise the kind of quagmire the country is getting into. All those security summits organised by the Federal government have failed to provide any panacea. It is so sad that, rather than focus on the more strategic cause of containing and resolving the fissiparous tendencies in the country, the government is distracting itself by sparring with Labour. It is not sufficient merely to have mobilised troops to smoke out the insurgents in the Niger Delta. In fact, the longer it takes the troops to re-establish the status quo, the more problematic their mission might become. One reason for this may derive from collateral casualties. Already, life in the areas being bombarded has become abnormal. But where the tally rises for innocent lives lost to collateral fire, and where the Federal troops take out their frustrations on the locals, the peoples of the Niger Delta are bound to agitate whether all the latest killings of their people plus environmental degradation are in defence of the people of the Delta, or other parasites in the Nigerian Federation. Would they not, in such circumstance, demand total control of their God-given resource, in order to abate the bloodshed? Will the rest of the Nigerian federation be motivated enough to embark on a genocidal mission to squelch the quest of the people of the Niger Delta? Remember, MASSOB has its own agenda.
We mustn't delude ourselves that the international community will of necessity plunge headlong into our domestic problems and attempt to solve them for us. They will provide humanitarian aid; they will provide conference venues and nudge the parties to a resolution. But global real politik is such that if the Niger Delta crisis becomes a major factor in driving up oil prices, leading oil-consuming nations will not hesitate to suggest and even support the mission of the Volunteer Force, if that will put paid to the wild escalation of oil prices.
Curiously, despite the foregoing worst-case scenario of certain ethnic nationalities dreaming of pulling out of Nigeria, another development is somewhat confounding. The source is the Bakassi Peninsula, which the International Court of Justice has ceded to Cameroon. Nigerians who are resident in Bakassi say that they do not want to leave Nigeria, even in a season of growing national incoherence.
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