Category: Niger Delta

Three years ago, this space hosted a piece entitled “The common Niger Deltan”. At the time, I had not had the honour of reading Helon Habila’s third and most recent novel “Oil on Water”. I started reading the book three days ago, and the imageries took me three years back. By the way, the book was published in 2010 in the United Kingdom and republished in Nigeria in 2012.

Habila hid behind the kidnap of a Briton to tell the Niger Delta story. Through Habila’s eyes, I see poverty, see degradation, see rejection and see desperation.

There are houses, made of wood, covered with palm front, which the owners must change from time to time as they wither away. There are imageries of luxury here and there, but in short supply. It is something many hear about and see when the rich choose to throw their weight about. So many children could not go to school. But, do they really have any reason to be poor? I don’t think so. They were born into wealth. Not that their fathers were rich. What I mean by being born to wealth centres around the fact that the oil of Nigeria’s prosperity is drilled in their domain.

A constant reminder of what this wealth can do is evident in the Residential Area or RA, as we are wont to call it, of the multinational the government gave the licence to drill oil on its behalf. The homes of multitude when compared with the RA cannot be described better than saying “heaven and hell, side by side”. The majority lives in hell; the minority in heaven.  It is like the people have sinned and come short of the glory of God to be consigned to that sort of existence. Or is it that they have sinned against their leaders, the men they elect to lead them? Or, better still, the men who forced themselves on them as our leaders.

In some parts of the Niger Delta, they never see night. The multinational operating in these areas have their flow stations so close to homes and send out gas flares throughout the day. So, the only way to differentiate between night and day is to check their wrist watches.

In many towns, oil pipelines are not underground. They are in the open. And often they burst or are burst and our soils and existence are damaged in the process.

The people have shouted, protested and threatened violence over their fate, yet change has refused to come. It is as if the multinational also has another licence: to send them all to their early graves so that their leaders can have all the wealth for themselves, including the little they manage to spend on basic amenities. This environmental genocide, as some have called it, is having serious effects on the people. Strange diseases are killing the people. Pregnant women are developing strange allergies. Yet, health centres are ill-equipped to take care of their health needs. They have several people with aggravated asthma; there are increases in respiratory symptoms, such as coughing and difficult or painful breathing, chronic bronchitis and decreased lung function. Premature death is not uncommon.

The truth is, the oil majors are more interested in the oil than in the people’s well-being. They can die for all they care. Oil is more important than man; that is their mantra. The government is an accomplice in this man’s inhumanity to man. Once the royalty keeps coming in, to hell with the people. Meanwhile, they will regularly scream “Power to the people”. Soon, they will come around distributing rice, George and wrapper and all kinds to buy their consciences and votes. Willingly, they will sell. No thanks to poverty.

It is lost on the government that the richest nations in the world are agro-based. The country used to make so much money from cocoa, groundnut and other cash crops. But, oil has made everyone mad. The nation has lost its sense of reasoning. The madness has eaten into the youths who are now looking for easy money. That is why they see militancy, kidnapping, illegal bunkering and armed robbery as better than tilling the few good soil left. It was one such kidnapping that Habila used as a peg to tell a people’s compelling story.  I agree with the school of thought which argues that our leaders brought about the laziness among the young ones. Someone needs to show them leadership and direction.

Agriculture, which has the potential to help, has no breathing space in the Niger Delta. The soils are polluted and where they are not, the people are not properly motivated. Everybody is just waiting for handout.

Rice farms will do a lot of magic. If fishing is well done, lots of cash and foreign exchange will come in. In many communities, crops, such as plantain and banana, just sprout out on their own.  They don’t have to plant them. Plantain can be exported too, to make more money. This is something that just grows on its own. Some thinking needs to be done.  It is hightime we changed our ways.

Habila’s book brings to mind the issue of security in the Niger Delta. The atmosphere in Floode’s house paints the situation of an average expatriates working in the region. Floode is the Briton whose wife’s kidnap is the springboard for the novel. In the waterfront house in Port Harcourt, where Floode lives, the walls are barb-wired; the half a dozen security men loaf about; and all. The Port Harcourt I see in this book reminds me that Port Harcourt of yore was not a city where fear walked on all fours. The Port Harcourt many grew up in was a city where people loved their neigbours like themselves. It was a beautiful city. So beautiful they rechristened it Garden City because of the choreographed embrace between its well-laid road networks and flowers lining them.

In it, oil giants made money and were not afraid. Their gates were not manned by stern-looking soldiers or riot policemen. Neither were their key figures escorted everywhere by gun-toting security men. The homes of the expatriates, like Floode, were not tightly-secured.

The Nigerian civil war was the first blow on Port Harcourt. Igbo who saw the Rivers State capital as home put their all into it. They built houses, industries and so on there. Then came the war and their properties were confiscated all in the name of abandoned properties. Their attempts to reclaim their toils after the war were resisted. Though some got back their due with time, not a few lost their properties forever.

After the war, Port Harcourt seemed to get its groove back. But the return to democracy in 1999 marked another twist. Politicians — out to show strength —  armed young and jobless youths with rifles and machine guns. Opponents were taken down with ease. Key political figures, such as Chief Marshal Harry, were killed and the culprits never found not to talk of being brought to justice. The last general elections turned the Rivers State capital to hell. I will always remember the Adubes who were consumed by the madness of the last general elections.

How can I forget them? Over 50 shots were fired during the invasion of their home, which lasted between 6pm and 7pm on April 3, 2015. They killed Christopher Adube, the patriarch of the house, two of his sons, his daughter, nephew and driver, in ONELGA, Rivers State.

She returned home after the assailants had left to find her husband and six others in pools of blood. The image still gives her jitters over two years after.

That terrible day, the assailants also left two of Adube’s children, Paul and Ogechi Adube, with permanent scars. They would have died on April 3 when men without brains stormed their home in ONELGA and killed their father and three of their siblings. They also killed their family driver and a family friend who was in their home when they came, dressed like soldiers. The bullets they pumped into then 15-year-old Paul’s leg have ensured he is wheel-chair bound. The hot lead they released unto Ogechi’s legs have also seen rods inserted into her bones and because of this, she cannot fold her legs. You can imagine the pains of walking around with legs that feel like wood.

Of the 12 children Adube had with his two wives, three were killed with him; two were left practically crippled and the others now live with shattered dreams. They are not sure of where the next meal will come from. Their father’s sin, I am made to understand, was his affiliation with the All Progressives Congress (APC). His children’s sin was being born by him. The evil men applied the Law of Moses forgetting that the coming of our lord Jesus Christ marked the end of that law, which encouraged taking out the father’s sin on the son or daughter.

The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) is investigating about 153 petitions on hate speeches and election-related violence which occurred in the various parts of the country in relation to the 2015 general elections. Twenty-three of the 153 petitions concern ONELGA, a local government in dear Rivers alone.

When the commission began its hearing on May 9, it was sorrow and tears galore. Memories came alive and made men and women shed tears like babies.

My final take: The Niger Delta deserves more than it is getting. The fault is not the Federal Government’s alone; neither is it the state governments’. The young people who have become agents of darkness, the oil giants which take the people for granted and the interventionist Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) also need turn new leaves. Without all hands being on deck, oil will continue to be on water and no one will be able to drink it and live.