Asoliye Douglas-West is an indigenous energy sector executive with political interests. He spoke with Sunday Oguntola on the lopsidedness of political appointments, governance and infrastructural development in Rivers politics in the last 30 years. Excerpts
CAN you give a brief historical background to the alleged marginalisation in Rivers State politics?
Being a minority state within the context of the larger Nigerian political equation, I perceive the people that populate the Niger Delta as one regardless of the diverse shades of our ethnicity and dialect. We are a people with common historical heritage bonded by the same struggle and aspirations.
We lived together in the same community and traded together in the same market where the fishermen exchanged their assortments of seafood for the farm produce sold by the farmers.
It is rather a strange phenomenon that our political evolution and expediency could permit the creation of a layered structure of minority reclassification to differentiate one group from the other. And I guess this all started manifesting after the creation of Bayelsa State in 1996.
The aftermath of the excision of Bayelsa State created some distortion and dislocation attendant to the subsisting status quo, which provided serendipitous advantage to a breed of neo-Rivers power grabbers and political opportunists.
Inadvertently, the remnant fractions of Ijaw ethnic groups have acquired the status of a miniscule minority within the minority Rivers State. It is neither incontrovertible nor unpublished that the ethnic groups of Ijaw extraction are severely marginalised in the current political setting in Rivers State.
Though we may acknowledge that there is some kind of diversity among the community of tribes and our diversity is drawn from the heterogeneity and geographic distribution pattern of ethnic groups.
By default, the deltaic nature of our geography had also defined our political architecture whereby there is a demarcation between the Rivers upland and the Rivers coastland.
This fault line had predated its creation as a state and existed even in the period when the present-day Bayelsa State was still part of old Rivers State but it was blurred and inconsequential.
Regardless of our ethnic background, such diversity was not tense enough to weaken our resolve to live together as one people united in faith and determination. It was recognised that standing alone as an individual entity, no ethnic group is large enough to dominate the others.
But the origin of our lesser minority status can be situated within the context whereby there has been an apparent convergence and sustenance of an alliance among the Ikwerres, Etches, Ogonis, and Abua/Ekpeye/Ndonis to constitute a single formidable bloc along the lines of geographic contiguity and ethno-lingual affinity in order to overwhelm the eastern Ijaws with a purpose to dictate the direction and establish perpetual dominance in Rivers politics.
For instance, we have a situation where none of the three incumbent senators representing Rivers State in the 8th National Assembly is an Ijaw speaking candidate. That is an accentuated marginalisation.
Is the marginalization you allege deliberate or orchestrated?
In my reckoning, the incidence of marginalisation is deliberate and orchestrated. After the excision of Bayelsa State, Rivers State was left with 23 local government council areas, out of which the Rivers upland retained 15 LGAs, while the Rivers coastal axis got depleted bearing paltry 8 LGAs without replenishment quite unlike the Kano/Jigawa scenario where more LGAs were created to retain the status quo.
Whereas the amalgam of all the Ijaw-denominated ethnic groups hold claim to 8 LGAs, each of the four main ethnic groups in the Rivers upland have possession of 4 LGAs each except Etche and Oyigbo that have a combined figure of three LGAs.
Ikwerre with 4, Ogoni 4, Ahoada/Ndoni 4 and Etche/Oyigbo 3 all sum up to 15. Now as significant as the imbalance, the Rivers upland is politically exploiting the advantage of this default in LGA inequitable redistribution by deliberately orchestrating and sustaining a regime of marginalisation.
As uncomfortable as they may appear, the facts are irrepressible and cannot be extinguished. Since the emergence of civilian governance in 1999, we have elected three governors but have had four governors and all four governors have their ethnic origin from Rivers upland.
As a matter of fact, Celestine Omehia, Chibuike Amaechi and Nyesom Wike are all Ikwerre sons of the same senatorial district. In a spate of 20 years, only one ethnic group in one senatorial district has exclusively arrogated to itself the unsavory privilege of producing governor after governor in succession as if they are exchanging relay baton.
Our Ikwerre brethren have monopolised both gubernatorial and ministerial positions so insensitively. And they said we should not talk, that we should be silent. We must recognise our diversity and make our internal democracy inclusive.
A situation where we have three universities and two polytechnics and three stadia all located in Rivers upland at the detriment and utter neglect of the coastal axis should neither be applauded nor unquestioned. Is that not deliberate or orchestrated?
That is not only obnoxious; it is unconscionable and repugnant to natural justice, equity and fairness. Where are the oilfields that give us our identity as Oil Rivers or oil producing state? They are found majorly in the mangrove swamps and water offshore.
The impact of governance is not felt in the riverine areas deep down south either by way of political appointments or spread of infrastructural projects.
What can be done to redress the situation?
There is a thread of visible similarity that knits the colorful attires adorned by almost all the stool-holders in the traditional chiefdoms across the various communities. This accentuates our cultural affinity. The solution is not far-fetched. There must be enthronement of inclusiveness in our politics.
The peculiarity of our geography shares similarity with the diversity in Delta State with multiple fragments of ethnicity. We can adopt the Delta State model whereby a subsisting political arrangement supports adherence to the rotation of juicy grades A and B political offices and positions amongst the politically contending ethnic groups of Urhobo, Itshekiri, Ijaw and Anioma. James Ibori Urhobo, Emmanuel Uduaghan Itshekiri, Willie Okowa Anioma. The same formula can work in Rivers State.
Why can’t we have a polytechnic or university located in Kalabariland or Bonny Island or Opobo? Why can’t we have a School of Nursing & Midwifery, College of Agriculture or Fisheries sited in the riverine south?
Why should there be power shift to riverine south despite its low voting population?
Once we premise politics as a game of number, then we may expose ourselves to devaluing political correctness. If politics were always seen strictly as a game of number, Barack Obama might have not been elected two-term president of the United States considering the fact that he is of a minority ethnic origin.
We have not really had controversy-free, reliable census in this country. Censuses have been conducted with inconclusive outcomes all of the time.
The integrity of the process of arriving at the final figure is doubtful. How do we establish that Kano and Jigawa states are more populated than Lagos State?
I cannot subscribe to the political algebra, which allocated 44 LGAs to Kano and 21 LGAs to Lagos by ignoring the elementary principles that define population distribution patterns in geography.
The Rivers upland bearing majority of the LGAs may not necessarily mean that that area holds more population than the coastal area.
The criteria for delineating constituent wards and demarcating boundaries had been susceptible to less than objective methods and devious political scales.
This may be arguable but would it be a surprise to learn that the islands in the eastern Niger Delta may actually carry a higher population density than the places that hold claim spatial localities? Let us create a political canvass where all the different stakeholders can draw and imprint expressions
How do you assess governance in Rivers State?
The graph does not present a good result. Governance in real terms drowned after the exit of Navy Commander Alfred Diete-Spiff and late Chief Melford Okilo.
Thereafter, governance has been consistently blemished with indelible mark of serial underachievement, perennial performance bankruptcy. The colour of the narrative has not changed since 1999.
The graph is persistently sloping southwards. Let me explain it this way. It is a laughable fact that Rivers State is a one-city state and has remained so since 1967. The economy is confined within the silo of one city at the detriment of other contiguous communities yearning for linkages.
Human capacity development is weak. The pattern of infrastructural development is skewed and growth is stunted. The one city is begging for urban renewal and expansion.
Why must everybody join the uni-directional traffic flowing into Port Harcourt to be able to grind out something and achieve meaningful result?