Ken Saro-Wiwa's Shadow 9781905068463

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Ken Saro- Wiwa’s Shadow Politics, Nationalism and the Ogoni Protest Movement

Published by Adonis & Abbey Publishers Ltd P.O. Box 43418 London SE11 4XZ http://www.adonis-abbey.com

First Edition, March 2007 Copyright 2007 © Sanya Osha British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 9781905068463 (PB), ISBN 9781905068470 (HB) The moral right of the author has been asserted All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted at any time or by any means without the prior permission of the publisher Cover Design Mega Graphix Printed and bound in Great Britain

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Ken Saro- Wiwa’s Shadow Politics, Nationalism and the Ogoni Protest Movement By

Sanya Osha

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

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Introduction

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Chapter One Federalism and Ethnicity in Nigeria: A Critical Exploration

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Chapter Two Historical Dimensions of the Ogoni Crisis

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Chapter Three The Birth of a Social Movement

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Chapter Four The Politics of Militarism and the Transitions of Terror

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Chapter Five A Logic of Global Terror

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Chapter 6 Conclusion: Criminalisation and Dissent

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Bibliography

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Index

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Acknowledgements I thank Georges Herault, Abiola Irele, Philippe-Joseph Salazar, Mammo Muchie, Dipo Irele, Fikile Mazibuko, Pieter Boele van Hensbroek, Nigel Gibson and Wim van Binsbergen who gave their time, skills, talents and support at various stages of the project. Financial support for the initial field work of the project was provided by the French Institute for Research in Africa, Ibadan during the tenure of Georges Herault as director. Georges tried his best to see that a part of this book was published by the institute but his efforts were frustrated by security operatives working for the Sani Abacha regime who became increasingly suspicious as the international community decried Nigeria’s declining human rights record. During the course of the field work, Doris Akekwe, Maxim Uzor Uzoatu and Jossy Idam provided tremendous support in terms of necessary research contacts and bibliographical material. Parts of this work were presented at conferences and seminars, most notably those at Cape Town, South Africa, 1999; Patna, India, 2001; Lagos, Nigeria, 2001; and Northampton, Massachussetts, USA, 2003. I thank the organisers of these various events for the opportunities to participate. In addition, I will like to thank my colleagues at the Centre for Civil Society, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, namely Patrick Bond, Richard Pithouse, Mandisa Mbali, Mavuso Dingani and Amanda Alexander, for being part of the effort to complete this work. The writing was completed at the African Studies Centre, Leiden, the Netherlands where I was a guest of the Agency in Africa theme group between October and December 2005. I am grateful to my colleagues within the Centre and the theme group for their collegial support during my fellowship term.

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Introduction Nigeria maintains an important position in the world community. For instance, at the time the Ogoni Nine were hanged in 1995, the country was the European Union’s first market and first supplier in sub-Saharan Africa, after South Africa. Nigeria also produced more than 7 per cent of the EU’s crude oil imports during the height of the Ogoni crisis. Currently, several Western petroleum companies are of vital importance to the Nigerian economy such as Shell, Agip, Chevron, and Elf (even as corporate mergers continue to reconfigure the oil industry). Furthermore, of the $37 billion which stood as the foreign debt during the mid-nineties, $19.4 billion were owed to the members of the Paris Club which as we know is made of European countries. These are some of the facts if we choose to evaluate Nigeria’s international status in relation to Europe during the height of the Ogoni crisis. When Ken-Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni indigenes were hanged, it shocked the entire global community. Such an outrage would have been deemed hitherto impossible, not only because the manner of their deaths goes against the grain of contemporary civilised values but also because the fact that such a miscarriage of justice had occurred within the shores of Nigeria, a nation that is so important in the West African sub-region and the entire African continent. The popular thinking was that since that tragedy could occur in Nigeria, then almost anything could be expected in a continent that maintains perhaps the least enviable place within the international community. One would suggest that such thinking may be regarded as valid, considering the various discouraging signals that had been emerging from the different regions of the beleaguered continent. This assessment was not supposed to be the product of indulgence or of pessimistic and alarmist posturing. Indeed the signals were quite discouraging and had been so for a considerable period of time. Even with all the wealth that had accrued to Nigeria through crude oil, various projects of national development proved to be enormously problematic (Shelly, 2005). The infant mortality rate was alarmingly high just as the adult literacy level was still quite low. Social services were being rapidly depleted and no concrete plans were made to replace and sustain them. vi

Introduction

But because of the importance of Nigeria within the international community, disillusion could not be encouraged. To be sure, Nigeria possesses a lot of potential that could be harnessed to strengthen the collective performance of the African continent. And so when the Nigerian government committed the blunder of hanging the Ogoni Nine, the world community deemed it fit to intervene. Fact finding missions of all kinds visited the country to discover what went wrong. In the process, other areas within the Nigerian polity came under intense scrutiny. The economy was reviewed just as the human rights situation was analysed and of course the issue of democracy in Nigeria also was a high priority with the international investigators. This was what the killing of the Ogoni Nine caused together with the then seemingly interminable June 12 presidential crisis which started in 1993. It is important to put the Ogoni crisis in its proper perspective for several reasons. First of all, some of those that perpetrated the injustices in Ogoniland are now bent on rewriting history or worse still destroying historical memory since they have the repressive machinery of state behind them. Nigerian history is replete with instances of such hypocritical revisionism. Consequently, all manner of historical incongruities have been created. Heroes can suddenly become villains through a mere decree and vice versa. For instance, General Yakubu Gowon (rtd.) once cut a villainous figure when the assassination of General Murtala Mohammed loomed large in the public mind, until General Ibrahim Babaginda (rtd.) rehabilitated him by series of extraordinary measures ranging from establishing a centre in his name to giving him some of the highest honours in the land. Now, Gowon hovers in a sort of historical limbo. In other words, he has been reconstituted into a persona of little historical weight and also of minimal contemporary value as a result of the governmental efforts to efface official facts relating to his public life and real national value. The same historical revisionism has been visited upon General Olusegun Obasanjo (rtd.). Obasanjo, who is the first soldier to have successfully carried out a transition to democracy programme in Nigeria, was wasting away in detention in spite of the tremendous international outcry in 1998, but through the machinations of the ubiquitous Ibrahim Babangida, he found his way to political power again in 1999. Before then, there had been elaborate official strategies aimed at demonising him. He had been implicated in the Colonel vii

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Lawan Gwadabe-led coup plot of 1995; evidence to prove his involvement in the plot was extremely scanty, yet he was kept in jail. But it is necessary to note that Obasanjo had been highly critical of the Abacha administration and General Sani Abacha did not tolerate criticism. This was why Wole Soyinka, Africa’s first Nobel prize winner for literature, went into exile along with so many other prodemocracy activists and journalists. Generally, Soyinka had always been critical of the Nigerian governmental establishment even when he was actively engaged in the nation-building process. In his book, The Open Sore of a Continent (1996), Soyinka addresses the June 12 presidential crisis and its implications for the political future of Nigeria; apart from being a fervent call for democracy, it is also a considerably impassioned meditation on what a nation entails. Soyinka in his characteristically forthright manner argues: A profound trust was betrayed, and only a community of fools will entrust its most sacred possession - nationhood - yet again to a class that has proven so fickle, so treacherous and dishonorable (1996: 9).

What the June 12 crisis and indeed the Ogoni crisis have demonstrated is that the geographical unity of Nigeria can and will be contested as long as certain vexatious anomalies are left unaddressed. As a result of the purported coup plot of 1995, the following military figures were jailed: Major General Shehu Yar’Adua (rtd), Colonel Lawan Gwadabe, Colonel Bello Fadile, Major Akinloye Akinyemi and a number of other individuals. Journalists jailed for the purported coup plot included Chris Anyanwu, publisher of the now defunct TSM magazine, Kunle Ajibade, editor of The News magazine, George Mba and Ben Charles Obi. Such unfortunate events caused great concern about the democratic future of Nigeria. Between September 12 and 14, 1996, a workshop with the theme “The Nigerian Democratisation Process and the European Union” was held in Bordeaux, France under the auspices of the Centre d’Etude d’Afrique of the Institute of Political Studies, Damiane University and with the support of the European Union. The workshop only served to strengthen doubts as to the possibilities for evolving an acceptable democratic ethos for the country. Attahiru Jega, a former president of the then proscribed Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), in a paper delivered at the workshop entitled, viii

Introduction

“What is Democracy about in Nigeria?” argued that the Nigerian democratisation project was a military-conditioned, controlled and directed process and that it was more a function of the “contagion” effect of global and African developments as well as Euro-American impositions of the structural adjustment conditionalities of the Bretton Woods institutional order. By extension, militarism had become the bane of political evolution in Nigeria as in many other African countries. Under militarism in Nigeria, several civilian institutions in addition to civil concepts and political ideologies underwent the most bizarre transfigurations. Federalism, democracy, the judiciary, ethnicity and even the Enlightenment notion of the university assumed baffling colorations when the military turned upon them. Indeed the military maintained a vice-like grip over Nigerian civil society and this resulted in many sociopolitical catastrophes, least of all, the Ogoni crisis. In terms of general outlook and orientation, there is very little to differentiate the Ibrahim Babangida-led junta from the Sani Abacha regime. Both shared similar antecedents, goals and interests. And since their atrocities shared many similar characteristics it was in their interests to devise a conception of justice and survival that fell in line with their aims. In fact, Lord Avebury, member of the British House of Lords who was also chairman of the British Parliamentary Human Rights group, lent his weight to this view of the two military regimes that blighted the political processes in Nigeria. In an interview granted Tell magazine and published on September 23, 1996, Lord Avebury said: What Abacha is doing is to repeat the techniques which Babangida used all the time. He is a good student of that master. I think he has even outdone his master. His transition is the ultimate triumph in deception.

In the same interview he had also said: Indeed Abacha’s tactics are similar to those of his predecessor. Some politicians for instance have claimed that he is bankrolling one or two political associations in his bid to hold on to power (ibid.).

It is quite encouraging to know that such accurate readings of the Nigerian political situation existed within the international community (see Birnbaum, 1995). Consequently, Tom Ikimi, the Nigeria’s Foreign ix

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Affairs Minister during the Abacha era, tried to delude the international community in relation to the Ogoni crisis when he delivered a speech at the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Committee in London on June 24, 1996: Since (the 1995 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting) Auckland, it has clearly come to light the Ogoni issue beamed at the time with an unparalleled sensationalism by the international media, was highly over-politicised and over-dramatised. The myths were Ken Saro-Wiwa was tried for his environmentalist views; that Nigeria’s interests were anchored on the need to protect its oil fields and that the trial was conducted under a military tribunal. The four Ogoni citizens who were ruthlessly murdered by Ken Saro-Wiwa and his accomplices have not been treated as persons deserving of human rights but rather as mere statistics.

The posturing in this extract was a mere afterthought as this as this study attempts to demonstrate. Concerted efforts were made by the Abacha junta and its agents to thrust the Ogoni crisis into the netherworld of oblivion, just as has been done with other instances of governmental injustice or folly. This study undertakes a historical reconstruction of the Ogoni crisis and also seeks to establish its validity as a national fiasco in the light of the some problematic contemporary political circumstances in Nigeria. These two tasks are necessary because the federal military government was bent on drastically diminishing the magnitude of the national tragedy. At the moment, the causes for which Ken Saro-Wiwa fought for are only given grudging recognition by the Nigerian ruling elite. Beginning from the time the kangaroo tribunal that tried KenSaro-Wiwa and his co-accused was established, there were several judicial irregularities as well as attempts to distort the complexities of the situation. In this regard, Priscilla Vikue - who was a major prosecution witness during the tribunal - was highly instrumental in providing support for the military junta. Vikue did not stop there. She went on to form the Gokana Women Forum made up of largely gullible women and the organisation was responsible for pushing the official view regarding the Ogoni crisis among Ogoni indigenes. There was also the Youths Association of Ogoni Oil Producing Communities (YAPCO) which was inaugurated on April 6, 1996 by Major Obi Umahi, a former commander of the Rivers State Internal x

Introduction

Security Task Force, a task force that became the main vehicle for the suppression of the Ogoni. This only confirmed the extent to which the government had been willing to go in its cover-up operations of both the magnitude and aftermath of the crisis. Another group, the Concerned Ogoni Leaders of Thought (COLT), which appeared to have some independent leanings - judging from its stated intentions - was also created. This group which identified with the objectives of the more radical Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP) also sprang up in the aftermath of the Ogoni crisis. But it certainly did not go far it in realising its aims, some of which included the creation of a new state for the Ogonis and the restoration of oil production activities in Ogoniland by multinational petroleum firms. What we can deduce from this is that the objectives for which organisations such as MOSOP were set up are still relevant in Ogoniland and other similar communities especially in the Niger Delta region. And what the Ogoni crisis has demonstrated is that the problems of oil-producing communities are fundamental, such that possess national and international dimensions (Ferguson, 2005). And finally, these dimensions are numerous; structural, historical, international and obviously socio-cultural, all of which need to be examined at some length to arrive at a better understanding of what can be done to forestall future occurrences of the crisis that currently affects the Ogonis in particular and the whole of the Niger Delta in general. In a similar vein, this work revisits the sociopolitical conditions surrounding the Ogoni crisis and the deaths of the Ogoni Nine. This study is also an exploration of what I consider to be the genocidal consciousness. In this respect, not only acts of genocide constitute the genocidal consciousness. Ken Saro-Wiwa accused the Nigerian state of carrying out a policy of genocide against the Ogoni. I explore the discursive background that led to this accusation and then I attempt to give an indication to its limits. Extreme ethnocentricism and the espousal of rigid political identities as in the case of pre-1994 Rwanda indicate aspects of the genocidal consciousness. As neoliberalism causes more troubling forms of dispossession, political identities become more distinct and instead of forging commonalities, communities tend to accentuate differences within and beyond their boundaries. The inability to forge commonalities among different communities is also an instance of what may lead to the genocidal xi

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consciousness. It is the rigidification of political identities without the possibility of cross-cultural intercourse and the inability to confront, recognise and respect the otherness of the Other. One is aware that this understanding of genocide may be quite problematic. This study does not set out directly to clarify it. Rather, it attempts to highlight its discursive complexities in order to better understand certain ideological positions, in this case, the ideological environment in which the Ogoni protest movement emerged, as well as the forms of counterarticulations that rose against it. Saro-Wiwa claimed that the Ogonis were victims of genocide. I suggest that this claim has more discursive than realistic weight. Also, I suggest that the intellectuals (such as Ben Naanen, but Johnson Nna is an exception) of the Ogoni protest movement, in not extending the critique of local postcolonial domination to the critique of broader forces of imperialism and the effects of global capital, first, underestimated the powers they were up against; second, they misread the various configurations of locality; and third, they failed to recognise that the ultimate genocidal effects are indeed spectral in nature. The spectrality of the genocidal effect is explored in chapter five. A part of the theoretical paradigm of this study attempts to incorporate analyses of 1] the notion of genocide and 2] the nature[s] of totalitarian terror. In exploring these concepts, the study addresses the work of thinkers such as Hannah Arendt (on totalitarian terror), Mahmood Mamdani (on the Rwandan genocide) and Achille Mbembe (on necropolitics). The first chapter is as an analysis of the concepts of federalism and ethnicity in Nigeria. The problematic ethnic configuration of the Nigerian nation is well known. Some would argue that the civil war that engulfed the country between 1967 and 1970 was due to the divisive tendencies of ethnic phenomenon. This chapter argues that the true picture is even more complex than this simplified notion of ethnicity. To address the challenges presented by ethnicity as it is underpinned by religion, the Nigerian state devised a peculiar version of federalism. This chapter traces this particular historical and political conjuncture. It also engages some of the current academic and popular discourses on ethnicity and the manner in which the religious factor plays out within them. Another point the chapter makes is that the Nigerian federal process and experiment are mediated by a somewhat unique combination of militarism, ethnicity and religion. xii

Introduction

The second chapter attempts to explain the colonial origins of Niger Delta capitalism. It identifies the main actors involved in the making of this mode of capitalism on both sides of the colonial divide. It argues that an understanding of the trade in palm oil during the colonial era is necessary for an appreciation the history of petroleum exploitation in the Niger Delta. The third chapter suggests that the conflict between Ogoni indigenes and the Nigerian government can be better appreciated within context of a much longer history beginning with the colonial encounter. It also identifies two main trajectories of colonialism; the first kind was imposed by the colonial regime and the second, which was pursued by the postcolonial state often in conjunction with multinational capital. The fourth chapter addresses Nigerian forms of militarism. In particular, it analyses the military regimes of Ibrahim Babangida, Sani Abacha, Abdul-Salam Abubakar to illustrate how they created a culture of corruption within Nigerian officialdom and also how they contributed to the militarisation of the polity. Furthermore, this analysis traces the connections between militarism and recent Nigerian experiments with democracy. In other words, it assesses the democratic adventures embarked upon by Babangida, Abacha and Abubakar and their broad sociopolitical implications. Finally, it explores how the first president of the fourth Nigerian republic, Olusegun Obasanjo, came into power under the auspices of residual militarism. As mentioned earlier, the fifth chapter highlights the activities of international capital and the devastating impact it has had on local communities. Critics of neoliberalism liken its effects to a form of political terror (Albo 2005; Bond, 2004; Hart, 2005; Harvey, 2003). In the conclusion of this study, the themes of criminalisation and dissent are evoked in order to appreciate better the prevailing conditions in the Niger Delta and the wider terrain of sociopolitical relations in Nigeria. In keeping the various ramifications of genocide in mind, we need to read Saro-Wiwa’s conception of it against the backdrop of actual technologies of domination that various military regimes and civilian governments have visited on the indigenes of Ogoniland. We also have to bear in mind the types of violence that the spectralisation of capital wreaks on them in particular and the Nigerian underclass in general. In this way, the dimensions of genocidal dispossession become more xiii

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intricate, thereby requiring greater analysis and deeper modes of interpretation. At some levels, this study is an attempt to highlight this complexity by incorporating critiques of militarism and its specific modes of domination in addition to suggesting the ways in which global processes are implicated in local technologies of repression. The Ogoni crisis, in spite of its particularity, extends to broad facets of contemporary Nigerian politics. First, it provides avenues to analyse the constellation of issues around minority rights, social activism and politics in its conventional and heretical forms. Second, it brings to the fore the configurations of military power both within full-blown military rule and under residual militarism within the context of democratic governance. Third, it points to the innumerable and sometimes inexplicable ways in which local politics is shaped by global forces. Fourth, it reveals the complexity of the discourse of human rights between the ever-shifting polarities of militarism, democratic governance, widespread informalisation and processes of contemporary globalisation. If these theoretical suggestions are not always made explicit in this study, they are nonetheless always implied. Furthermore, the ethnographic components of the study are assembled to underline what is not always theoretically explicit but inform the elements of discursivity.

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Chapter One

Federalism and Ethnicity in Nigeria: A Critical Exploration This chapter examines a variety of sociopolitical configurations in which the Nigerian experience of federalism was forged. It suggests that the ongoing Nigerian experiment with federalism can be understood by confronting the confluences where militarism, ethnicity and religion meet. In addition, the Nigerian civil war also had a tremendous impact on how the contours of Nigerian federalism were shaped. The chapter begins with an examination of federalism itself as it relates to the Nigerian nation and then moves on to address the political instrumentalisation of religion and ethnicity. Indeed the histories of Nigerian sociopolitical events and categories such as militarism, ethnicity, religion as well as the imperatives of the nationbuilding project play against one another in a context that is never even and which is shaped often by factors of political expediency. In addition, the trauma of the Nigerian civil war is partly responsible for the various pressures for the federalisation of the polity. At many moments during periods of militarism, unitarism appeared to be more dominant than the practice of federalism successive military regimes claimed to uphold. In relation to the dominant discourse on ethnicity in Nigeria, this chapter suggests that an unyielding focus on the primordiality of ethnicity does not do justice to the manner in which waves of contemporary globalisation as well as the imperatives of the age of virtuality reconfigure the contours of personal and collective identity. In this respect, the limits of political economy become clear when it fails to account the migrant dimensions of identity construction in the current global age. Thus the expatriation of the struggles relating to the construction of Nigerian identity has become a legitimate source to examine what shape the pressures for the federalisation of the polity will take. Indeed migrant Nigerian identities operate within diverse categories in terms of class, gender and ethnicity and with a wide range of professional affiliations some of which are legitimate while others are not. The literature that is analysed in this chapter does not address this important dimension. 15

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More specifically, the final sections on the nature of Nigerian ethnicity suggest that apart from concentrating on the more primordial manifestations of ethnicity (the politics of the soil and blood), there is also the need to examine the expatriation of the struggles for the construction of identity, that is, the virtualisation of experiences by which the politics of identity construction is manifested in order to discern how they resonate within the ‘bounded’ Nigerian nation. Processes of a nation-building project After almost five decades of “constitutional federalism” and an even longer history of colonial regionalism, Nigeria is still frantically grappling with the hydra-headed problems associated with the multiethnic state. These problems manifest themselves in a variety of ways and the factors responsible for them must be sought within the decisive context of colonialism and the colonial legacy. Nigeria, just as other African nations, is solely a construction of the European colonial enterprise and is, to employ a more apt term, “a geographical expression” as Obafemi Awolowo (1947), the late Nigerian statesman, called the territory. But for several reasons, different categories of political actors have sought to change or at least undermine this telling perception of the nation. The price of keeping the nation intact has undoubtedly been a high one. Various competing interests and historical antecedents have combined to direct or misdirect the course of Nigeria’s political destiny according to the changing demands of expediency. To comprehend the perplexities of the country’s evolving history, we shall have to examine at some length its pluralist nature and the various attempts by different political leaders to implant the seemingly necessary yet problematic concept of federalism. In doing this, we shall come to understand the apparently intractable nature of multi-ethnic societies and perhaps eventually we shall be able to discern measures that augur well for conflict management in those societies. The notion of federalism in Nigeria has obviously become a handy political tool. But even after many decades of political engineering, federalism as a political concept remains in the main, elusive. The continuous problematisation of the concept is reflected by the fact that a Federal Character Commission was constituted yet again in December 1995 by the Abacha administration. Among its terms of 16

Federalism and Ethnicity in Nigeria: A Critical Exploration

reference were to: ♦

♦

♦

work out an equitable formula for the distribution of all cadres of offices in the federal and state public services, as well as government-owned companied and agencies; Promote, monitor and enforce compliance with the principles of proportional shaping of all bureaucratic, economic, media and political posts at the levels of government, and take such legal measures against any individual, ministry, government body or agency which fails to comply with any federal character principle or formula prescribed or adopted by the commission.

The Federal Character Commission had hardly settled down to work when charges that it had become “an arena of intrigues bordering on crisis of confidence, ethnic, jingoism and favouritism” (The Guardian on Sunday, March 10, 1996) were levelled against it. To make matters worse, Sabo Bako, the Commission’s Secretary was compelled to resign. Among his reasons for resigning were “the manner in which the former Secretary to the Commission, Miss Anna Pepple was appointed and removed. This angered some southern members of the Commission, who saw the appointment of Chairman and Secretary from the northern part of the country, though from different geo-political zones, as a negation of the principle of the federal character by the Commission itself.” Bako, who had been a prominent Marxist at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria in the mideighties, also said his tenure as Secretary of the Commission had been “horrendous and disappointing”. On another level, the Commission was plagued with problems of logistics concerning funding, accommodation, administrative organisation and terms of contract regarding hired personnel. This, surely, was no way to put the Commission on a sound footing and inspire public confidence. It also confirmed a certain view that a degree of levity or indecisiveness afflicts Nigerian political leadership generally in relation to the issue of federalism. However, before we examine the issue of federalism any further, we ought to also explore the problem of ethnicity. Ethnicity has been defined in various ways and some of the categories include: (1) collective consciousness; (2) bases of affinity; and (3) behavioural 17

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inclinations (Premdas, 1993: 7). These are obviously slightly sophisticated frameworks which Ralph Premdas identifies. To begin at a more basic level, Eghosa Osaghae posits that ethnicity “is a derivative of ethnic group which may ensure when two or more ethnic groups (identities) are involved in a competitive setting” (1994b: 2). He also asserts that: An ethnic group may be defined as a group whose members differentiate themselves from others on the basis of certain common objective criteria like language, culture and territory, and subjective criteria like the myth of common origin… which provides the basis for forging a common destiny for the people who can lay no claim to actual kinship (ibid.2-3).

Thus, the ethnic quest is essentially a “primordial attachment” to a given culture and social structure. Osaghae also points out that ethnicity “is more of a political than a cultural phenomenon” (Ibid.6). This point shall now be explored. Ethnic affiliations become strengthened through the need to acquire political relevance or even power. From a certain angle, it may even be argued that the ethnic question is nothing more than a “will to power”, to employ a popular Nietzschean expression. But unfortunately, there are several drawbacks that militate against ethnicity as a basis for political activity, especially on the Africa continent where it has been conceived in more ways than one as the scourge of democracy and truly enlightened and inclusive political practice. Okwudiba Nnoli minces no words in asserting that: Ethnicity is…seen as one of the main obstacles to democracy because it leads to the substitution of ethnic interest for the national interest, favouritism, nepotism, and the accentuation of social inequality (1994: 10).

African socialists made fervent attempts to downplay the phenomenon of ethnicity within the African political scene (Osaghae, 1992: 215). In what Basil Davidson would call “the poverty of ideological thought” on the part of African political theorists and intellectuals, attempts were made to wish ethnicity away into the primordiality of prehistory. The explicit objective was to cast “Africaoriented” ideologies into categories recognisable to the scientific 18

Federalism and Ethnicity in Nigeria: A Critical Exploration

Western mind. But in the process of imposing supposedly scientific modes of analyses on obviously novel and also apparently problematic African conditions, these African political theorists committed a fatal error, one from which they are yet to recover from completely. And so to understand ethnicity in its multifaceted manifestations and also through its possibilities we are compelled to look further back into the profound dislocations wrought by the colonial encounter. In doing this, it would be most instructive to turn to Basil Davidson’s now rather famous book, The Black Man’s Burden (1993). Davidson reveals that the colonial European often found it convenient to refer to the diverse African ethnic identities as tribes, hence the now pejorative term tribalism which is no different from the prototype species of European nationalism and possibly what is now referred to as ethnonationalism. In colonial Africa, tribalism became a suitable platform to launch the numerous nation-statist programmes that were to bring about independence for the colonially created African geographical entities. So rather than being a disincentive for mass political mobilisation or a source intra-ethnic and inter-ethnic confrontation, tribalism became a veritable organising force. However, this cannot be said of the present-day understanding or persuasion of the term. To be precise, Davidson (1993) argues that modern tribalism flourishes under conditions of sociopolitical disorder, that it is destructive of civil society and undermines public morality and the rule of law. It is also argued that this modern version of tribalism discourages the institution of a suitable democratic ethos for Africa. As to be expected, post-colonial African nations have become the sites of the most virulent cases of clientelism in which cunning and aggressive rulers can turn the instruments of state (through the privatisation of public authority) for purely personal use, motivated in addition by favouritism, nepotism, graft and the concomitant brutality (what Achille Mbembe terms processes of brutalisation) necessary to maintain political power. Several case studies would testify to this assessment: Liberia (under Samuel Doe), Uganda (under Idi Amin and Milton Obote) and even to some extent, Nigeria (where clientelism has become one of the surest means of economic and political survival) are all nation-spaces ravaged by the fallout of political brutalisation. Consequently, the political centre, or to be more exact the state, has become the site of violent contestation in which a winner-takes-all 19

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mentality not only prevails but is enacted over again to the detriment of what has been called “the nation-statist project”. However, let us limit the discursive focus to the geographical space called Nigeria. During the colonial era, the British colonialists needed to operate a mode of governance that would serve their economic and administrative purposes and this task was considerably difficult given the diverse, multi-ethnic character of the territory. As Osuntokun (1979: 91) contends, the pluralistic nature of the territory was tackled by a tried and tested approach through which ethnic and cultural diversities “existed as separate units”. This approach had worked in Canada, Australia and South Africa, so it was assumed that it could also work in Nigeria. The adoption of the principle of federalism marked the origins of its export by that great colonial superpower, Britain. Indeed, federalism served another related need and objective since it was “more or less an evidence of some form of disunity, political weakness and uneven economic development, the British definitely wanted to keep the federating units as apart as possible. In this way, the British might continue to meddle in the internal affairs of their former dependency to their own economic and political advantage after they would have granted the dependency her independence.” (ibid.) In 1912, the two large territories of Northern Nigeria and Southern Nigeria were placed under the control of one man, Sir Frederick Lugard. And then for reasons pertaining to administrative expediency and also economic efficiency the two disparate provinces were amalgamated two years later. Thus began a bold if reckless experiment in social and political engineering that would change permanently the course of the lives of various peoples who make up modern-day Nigeria. This step, needless to say, failed to consider several serious implications it was certain to bring in its train. The two old protectorates of Nigeria were not only diverse in terms of culture, language, political organisation and aspirations but also in terms of land mass, and this triggered off apprehensions of domination in different parts of the country. Later on, during the sociopolitical evolutionary process that started with the framework of classical colonialism, or more precisely during colonial regionalism, Northern Nigeria made up 79 per cent of the nation’s territory while the Eastern part of Nigeria accounted for 8.3 per cent, and Western Nigeria made up on its part 44.2 per cent. 20

Federalism and Ethnicity in Nigeria: A Critical Exploration

These disparities generated ambivalent attitudes on the part of the various ethnic groups towards the federation. These fundamental differences were accentuated in turn by highly diverse historical imperatives which the colonial situation failed to negotiate. Thus, the failure of the colonial encounter to recognise certain basic African historical realities has become the very bane of the nation-building process all over the continent in relation to the enduring problematics of [de]territorialisation engendered by various stages and histories of failed states, the politics and actualities of decolonisation, and the new political economy of war in postcolonial Africa. In Northern Nigeria, where the emirate system existed and continues to this day, the hierarchical structure of rulership was not entirely uniform, as the zone that came to be known as the Middle Belt presented an intractable administrative problem to Lugard and the British administrators who followed his administrative line of thinking (Osuntokun, 1979: 94). And so Lugard chanced upon an “unimaginative panacea to this administrative bottleneck by the choice of indirect rule.” This system of indirect rule was to put in action “an entrenched local aristocracy which shared power with agents of an army of occupation… but it later acquired an aura of orthodoxy among both officials in Northern Nigeria and principal clerks of the British Colonial office” (ibid.) The European colonial enterprise was notorious for resorting to such arbitrary acts of political and administrative dislocation (Soyinka, 1999b). A celebrated instance of this arbitrariness is the case of the Belgian colonial authorities in the territory known as Rwanda. Jinmi Adisa in his book, The Comfort of Strangers (1996), which is a study of the Rwandan refugee situation after the tragedy of 1994, demonstrates how what he has appropriately termed “the politicization of ethnicity” came into existence. In his words: The Belgian colonial authorities erected their power base on an ethnic analysis of society, control being exercised through the dominant Tutsi minority; this ethnic difference was sharpened by (among other things) the introduction of ethnic identity cards in 1930. (Adisa 1996: 19).

This administrative insensitivity is responsible in no small measure for the genocidal ethnic wars that have now torn Rwanda apart and which resulted in a particularly disconcerting refugee problem following the 1994 tragedy that Adisa’s study describes. Mahmood 21

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Mamdani deals with the Rwandan crisis even more exhaustively in his magisterial book, When Victims become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda (2001). The point is that, by and large, European colonialism paved the way for the immensely destructive chancre of ethnicity that currently plagues most African nations from Rwanda and Burundi to Uganda, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia and of course Nigeria. Similarly, the same politicisation of ethnicity occurred in Nigeria through the activities of Sir Richmond Palmer, a senior colonial official in the North and an avowed racist “who indoctrinated Northern emirs about their total difference not only politically but even racially, from their Southern compatriots” (Osuntokun, 1979: 95). While Western Nigeria possessed established systems of traditional governance this was not as true of the Igbo and Ibibio areas which were especially intractable for the purposes of colonial administration. In the later areas, the British colonial authorities had created what were known as “warrant chiefs” to administer the somewhat individualistic if not exactly democratic peoples of the Eastern region. Once again, an established mode of existence was thrown into disarray and another was hurriedly established without due cognisance of what those peoples actually required (see Comaroff and Comaroff [1991; 1997] on the nature of the transformations wrought by colonisation). But in real terms, the modes of traditional rulership in Northern and Western Nigeria differed. First, none of the Southern communities had a tradition of taxation and “in none of them existed a ruler approximating in personal authority to that of a Fulani emir (ibid.).” It may be argued that Northern Nigeria at that time was at a more developed stage of feudalism. This disparity in structures of traditional rulership can be observed even now with the Sultan of Sokoto exhibiting virtually unchallenged dominance over his subjects and other brother emirs while the Alafin of Oyo and Ooni of Ife continually argue over who is supreme even though several other Yoruba obas (kings) fail to seriously acknowledge the superiority of either of them. Judging from a historical perspective, it is not possible for an oba in the Western region of Nigeria to achieve the consummate dominance of a Northern emir because the dynamics of British colonialism put paid to such an eventuality. In addition, the South as a whole was caught up in the throes of economic development and the various forms of social dislocation they bring in their wake. The closeness of the South to the 22

Federalism and Ethnicity in Nigeria: A Critical Exploration

coastal areas where modern forms of trade had begun to flourish created the conditions for both economic growth and sociocultural disequilibrium. This probably demanded anti-feudalistic public and private mentalities as required by the capitalist ethic. In the same vein, the burgeoning Southern protocapitalism also resulted in the cosmopolitanism that frequent and intimate interaction between different cultural forces engenders. The “myth of separated development of the South and the North” (Osuntokun, 1979: 97) was reinforced at every given opportunity by the British Colonial Office which fought against any attempt to foster a unified approach to development on the part of any skeptical colonial administrator. The success of this political separation would plague Nigeria to the extent that Sir Ahmadu Bello, the powerful premier of the Northern region, continued to entertain grave doubts about the possibilities of maintaining a unified nation. He was definitely not alone in this regard. Indeed, fear was the predominant emotion that all but crippled the confidence of the principal political actors who negotiated the federation out of British colonial dominion. Isawa Elaigwu (1979) puts it succinctly when he suggests that Nigeria was a federation based on psychological fears of political and economic domination. Southern Nigeria was dominated by fears regarding the size and the numerical strength of Northern Nigeria. And given the ethno-regional realities of the country, the South saw no possibilities for it to acquire real federal power. The North, on the other hand, was intimidated by the level of modernisation the South had attained through the benefits of Western education. However, the source of these fears must essentially be sought, as Osuntokun writes, in “the reality of Nigerian politics of divide and rule, which the British did everything to foster” (1979: 98). Consequently, “in spite of all the nationalist forces that were working in the direction of unity and independence, about half a century of British rule had ensured that the task of rational unification must of necessity be an arduous one” (ibid.) Having created this undoubtedly conflictual political scenario, the British colonialists could then sit back and watch the effectively dichotomised North and South begin a gruesome struggle for their various objectives of economic development in addition to initiating strategic manoeuvres to gain political power at the centre. The colonialists stood back from the fray as they continued to pursue their own predetermined economic interests. In this heated political 23

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atmosphere that involved a frenetic “triangular squabble between the North, West and East” (ibid. 100) the less prominent ethnic minorities began to display displeasure at the clearly inequitable nature of national development. Their displeasure would become even more intense and vociferous as the years rolled by and political awareness became more widespread. After the Second World War, “tribal unions” with unmistakable nationalist objectives were formed. In this way, the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) representing mainly the east, the Northern Peoples Congress (NPC) and finally the Action Group which had its cultural and political beginnings in the Egbe Omo Oduduwa were launched between 1948 and 1949. We must not however view these ethnic based political parties as merely tribal unions since they were indeed more than just mere ethnic associations. They also espoused powerful nationalistic sentiments that went a long way in securing political independence for Nigeria. For instance, the young Anthony Enahoro of the Action Group had moved a motion for national independence on the floor of the Central Legislature in 1953. Paradoxically, in post-independence Nigeria, Enahoro became one of the federal military government’s (especially during the reign of General Sani Abacha) most persistent gadflies by virtue of his consistent pro-democracy stance. The postcolonial period beginning in 1960 did not heal the incisive wounds made by the inherently lopsided federalism created by British colonial calculation and administrative lapses. As we shall see in due course, various colonially created centrifugal political tendencies had and would continue to have devastating reverberations on the Nigerian polity. The point is, just as any pluralistic society ridden with the natural divisions to be found within a truly multi-ethnic context, Nigeria has always tended to dwindle away from itself except when held together by potent authoritarian systems. These remarks inevitably lead to another problematic area of discourse; public finance. In traditional fiscal methodology regarding revenue allocation in a federation where the three tiers of government are present, namely, federal, state and local, Akin Olalokun gives the primary reasons for government’s fiscal policy. The first is the need to redress the incidence of financial imbalance between the various levels of government. The second motive is triggered by the difference “in the revenue-raising capacities of the lower levels of government” 24

Federalism and Ethnicity in Nigeria: A Critical Exploration

(Olalokun, 1979: 109-110), and the final reason is the necessity to promote certain specific local or state projects. Hence we can then proceed to distinguish what have been termed “conditional” and “unconditional” transfers from the federal level. Given the complex character of fiscal relations within a federation it becomes imperative to evolve some sort of theoretical matrix for the analysis of economic affairs. As a result, in the 1950s, The prevailing theory of fiscal federalism among public finance experts was no more than their view of federal and state government operating as separate units with each adhering to the principle of horizontal equity (ibid. 111).

But the principle of horizontal equity was faulted on the grounds that “if a state or locality is poor relative, the level of taxation needed in the former to bring the level of public services to that existing in the latter will be much higher, thereby imposing a heavier tax burden on the citizens of the relative poor state” (ibid. 112). Buchanan – a monetary theorist Olalokun discusses at length – who made this observation concludes that horizontal equity not only impinges upon “the principle of fiscal equity but also efficient resource allocation” (ibid.). And finally, to redress this state of affairs his proposition is that “citizens in a rich state or locality should be taxed more heavily than their counterparts in a poor state or locality” (ibid.). One could argue that Buchanan’s proposition can only work in a federal context in which the rule of law is respected, that is, under the rubric of classical federalism. Of course there is the more acute problem of how to apply the required degree of stringency in deciding what really constitutes fiscal equity. Such matters surely are not beyond the realm of undue politicisation, in Nigeria for example. However, these are merely passing remarks prompted by some of the peculiarities of African structural conditions (Mbembe, 2001). Generally speaking, “because of the greater financial imbalance in less developed federations, equalization has developed as an important objective of their fiscal systems. But intergovernment resource transfers to effect equalization in these countries have been based on a set of principles which are rather different from the fiscal equity and efficiency principles of the kind… in the context of the older and developed federations” (Olalokun, 1979: 114). Still proceeding along the same path, we can distinguish three principles that 25

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determine the nature of intergovernmental transfers. These are the principle of “derivation” which is essentially “the method of distributing to the various units making up the federation the total or some proportion of certain taxes assumed to have been paid by their citizens” (ibid. 115). The second principle is based on need, in which the twin factors of fiscal necessity and numerical strength of a given political unit come into play. And finally, the third principle regarding intergovernmental transfers is motivated by the demands of “national interest” or equitable development. Beginning in the colonial era, Nigeria has had quite a chequered history of fiscal restructuring as there have been several economic development periods starting with the 1946-1952 financial plan. Other economic development plans followed until the crisis in the global petroleum sector coupled with the world economic recession inflicted a decisive and deleterious impact on the national financial barometre, one from which it has unfortunately not been able to recover. During the initial period of national economic development, planners of fiscal policy placed greater emphasis on the principle of derivation and also sought to grant the federating regions greater financial autonomy. However, the advent of independence brought about a change in the orientation from a clear emphasis on derivation to an elevation of the population factor in economic planning. And then again, after the transition from civilian governance to military rule “the period between 1969 and 1974 relied on an interim allocation arrangement which was largely based on the principle of derivation and that of need to a lesser extent (ibid. 119).” Shortly afterwards, the 1975 Revenue Allocation Decree de-emphasised the primacy of the principle of derivation as it was discovered to be responsible for the variegated picture of national economic development. It has been necessary to situate the nation’s fiscal development within its historical perspective because it has recently become a major cause of minority agitation especially among ethnic identities that are also oil-producing communities. In other words, the agitations for resource allocation and control have become a crucial national issue. Indeed, we must recognise the fact that the very phenomenon of ethnicity in Nigeria has been accentuated by the unending quest of various ethnic groups for a piece of “the national cake”. It is against this background that we shall embark upon a more detailed appraisal of ethnicity itself. Even more specifically, we shall look at the measures 26

Federalism and Ethnicity in Nigeria: A Critical Exploration

advanced for the resolution of ethnic conflicts and as well as strategies for identifying the conditions that induce destructive ethnicity. But before we do so, if we are to move for a while away from Africa to consider the ethnic situation around the globe, a particularly distressing case comes to mind, the case of Bosnia-Herzegovina. We need to link the entire issue of ethnic conflict to much broader dimensions than we have attempted so far and also to a number of other related discursive configurations. The history of genocidal assaults against Muslim communities in Europe dates several centuries back. About five hundred years ago, Christendom undertook the first major wave of ethnic cleansing to wipe out Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula. The twentieth century, in spite of all the assumptions of civilisation, progress and humanitarianism has also witnessed a repeat of a much discredited historical event. At the end of the Second World War, an estimated 103,000 Muslims were exterminated in Yugoslavia, in revenge for Bosnian Muslims’ collaboration with the Nazi occupation. More pertinently, a spate of Serbian aggression against Bosnian Muslims began in the spring of 1992. This genocidal onslaught came to be known as one of the worst incidents of ethnic cleansing of the twentieth century. The outcry against the indignities of the conflict around the world was tremendous. Kalim Siddiqui, leader of the Muslim Parliament in London, wrote a disconcerting but illuminating essay entitled “Islam and The West After Bosnia” (Echo of Islam, March 1994) providing insightful analyses into the historical, ideological, religious as well as politico-cultural underpinnings of the Bosnian crisis. His article shows the various origins from which an ethnic crisis can spring and also other determinants that can influence and decide its final outcome. Ethnic strife does not occur exclusively in developing nations alone. The cross-cultural currents and mobility around the global community do not allow for strict nationalist exclusivism and even the developed nations have to constantly redefine their priorities, identities and contemporary realities against and/or according to the pressing exigencies that seek to disrupt social stability and political continuity. Arjun Appadurai, in his book Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (1996), analyses the fluidity of postmodern concepts as flows of people, goods, services and ideas mediate between seemingly irreconcilable cultural and geographical spaces. A large part of the 27

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Bosnian crisis is an inevitable result of not heeding these manifestations of contemporary globalisation. It also indicates how difficult it is for any given society to become really centripetal and to accept with equanimity the transgressive spirit of multiculturalism in an age in which the so-called “clash of civilizations” is an important principle or constitutes a central dynamic (Huntington, 1996). It may even be argued that the excesses of nationalism still lie within the heart of Europe but have assumed a more subtle complexion. If not, how do we account for the open hostility to European Muslims? But in its mobilised opposition to Muslims, Europe subverts the very culture of secularism that has become central to its civilisation, thereby laying to waste the accomplishments of theorists like Rousseau, Diderot and Voltaire who laboured to institute a regime of modern rationalism (Mamdani, 2004). Hence the mysticism of medievalism can still be found in an age that has repeatedly been termed postmodern. In short, it only takes a few multicultural threats to disrupt the stability of the sociopolitical order and also prove that the old neuroses and psychological apprehensions concerning ethnic purity still exist. This is what the Bosnian crisis demonstrated in relation to Europe. On the other hand, it is possible to establish that there is an antidemocratic and an egoistic element about the phenomenon of culture itself which constantly strives to diminish the importance/presence of the postcolonial, sometimes premodern Other. Once there is an act by the Other to articulate the contrariness of its presence, as it were, violent reactions begin. This is what can be observed in Europe despite attempts to think and act against the grain. Furthermore, we can connect the cultural egoism of Europe to its awesome past of domination and colonialism. In a lengthy and telling psychological portrait, Siddiqui writes: The West achieved its colonial domination over Africa and Asia by its superior power, technology, organization, political, military and economic skills. For an animal so voracious, however, simple domination would not suffice. The West proceeded to undermine and destroy the old traditional societies and their institutions, including language, centers of learning, architecture: existing social and familial structures, and norms of behaviour. The Europeans regarded everything outside Europe as barbaric and primitive. Thus the Europeans took upon themselves task of remaking the old world in the name of “progress” and “civilization” (ibid.).

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Federalism and Ethnicity in Nigeria: A Critical Exploration

Definitely, there needs to be a new recognition and understanding of the figures of the marginal, the subaltern, the unusual presence, the alien, the refugee and the underdeveloped that constantly reappear within the heart of postmodernity. This lack of mutual understanding (between the West and the rest) has predictably caused a lot of harm. A case is point is that of Salman Rushdie, author of the highly controversial novel, The Satanic Verses. Although, the late Imam Khomeini’s fatwa upon the author was eventually lifted, the entire episode revealed the expansive distance between the so-called metropolitan centre[s] and supposedly peripheral forms of existence, regions and orientations. It displayed the daunting proportions of the acute polarisation – political, religious, cultural, ideological – that characteristics our collective humanity. In specific terms, Had it not been for the Rushdie affair, it would not have been possible to convince British Muslims that they live in a country whose government, political system and media are inveterately hostile to Islam and Muslims (ibid.).

This brings us to the vexatious issue of Islamic fundamentalism. There is the tendency – if only implicit – by the European general public, goaded of course by the mass media, to associate adherents to Islam with terrorism. This perception, over time, seems to have become a permanent fixation and has definitely deepened with the 9/11 event. Now, it may be argued that this is a classic reflection of cultural arrogance on the part of the West for if we may ask, what efforts (before September 11) have been made at a consistent level by the West to understand Islam without unnecessary condescension or outright hostility? These differences are real and fundamental. The Islamic modes of worship and existence have from time immemorial been vilified and elaborate attempts have been made to expunge them completely from European consciousness. The Muslim Parliament could infer from the Bosnian crisis that cultural genocide against Muslims in Europe persists from the following deductions: a) that the major states of Europe and North America knew in advance that Serbia and Serbs of Bosnia-Herzegovina planned the total extermination of Bosnia’s indigenous Muslim population; b) that the Permanent Members of the UN Security Council and the

29

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European Community approved of the Serbian aggression and the subsequent ‘ethnic cleansing” of Bosnia-Herzegovina; c) that the Western states deliberately contrived their diplomatic, economic and military options, including sanctions, conferences and “peace-plans”, in such a way as to allow the Serbs time to pursue their objectives; d) that the UN and EC actively supported the Serbs by depriving the Muslims of their right to self-defence, by effectively imposing an arms-embargo on Muslims alone; aiding and abetting ethnic cleansing by moving the civilian population; and establishing concentrationcamps under the cover of “safe havens”; e) that the so-called “humanitarian aid” was primarily designed to appease public opinion and disguise the West’s true role; f) that the failure of Muslim governments and the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) to act in defence of Bosnia-Herzegovina demonstrates once again their total and continued subservience to the West; and g) that the British Government in particular was and remains an active partner in the continuing holocaust of the Muslims of BosniaHerzegovina..

These deductions confirm a significant point, which is that Muslims in Europe have no confidence in the entire system of European social and political relations. They also show that European Muslims are afflicted by a chronic sense of alienation from the central networks of the European and by extension Western sociopolitical system. But instead of impeding the drive for political and social integration on their (Muslims‘) own terms, it has in fact increased the pace of efforts at self-determination. The cultural difference which Europe sought to destroy is in turn reinforced through the inevitable need to promote and consolidate collective survival. Consequently, age-long polarisations based on political and sociocultural differences are awakened and brought to the fore and those seemingly intractable differences are alarmingly becoming prominent features of European society and everyday life. Perhaps the most level-headed approach to the issue would be to avoid trying to contain or abolish the difference of the Other, since this may only serve to provoke unnecessary violence and reinforcement of the very identities the European authorities are seeking to undermine. Ignoring this difference completely won’t do as well. The goal should be attempting to understand cultural differences without equivocation, repressed 30

Federalism and Ethnicity in Nigeria: A Critical Exploration

hostility or fear. Politics of Blood and Soil Mahmood Mamdani argues that the 9/11 incident is the main cause of the contemporary politicisation of culture, and not the ‘clash of civilization’ arguments as propounded by the likes of Samuel Huntington. Mamdani’s thesis is important because it refocuses attention to the logic and violence of colonialism within the present age of contemporary globalisation. Violence, Mamdani tells us, is the very condition of political modernity. Political modernity and the emergence of the modern nation-state owe much to the centralisation of statist violence. In his words, “political modernity is equated with the beginning of democracy, but nineteenth-century political theorists - notably Max Weber - recognized that political modernity depended upon the centralized state monopolizing violence” (Mamdani 2004:5). In the construction of political unities - identities and communities - the state employed its monopoly of violence using strategic rationality to foster either political belonging or exclusion as was the case during the period of the Spanish Inquisition. Indeed, there were “two kinds of victims of European political modernity: the internal victims of state building and the external victims of imperial expansion” (Mamdani, 2004: 5-6). Thus both natives and foreign subjects were always vulnerable to the projects of rationalised violence of the modern nation-state. In order to foster its imperialist aims, political modernity employed both race (South Africa, see also Posel, 2000, 2001) and bureaucracy (Algeria, Egypt and India) for the capture, containment and control of subject peoples. But containment and control were not the only strategies of the imperial motive. Genocide was also a vital aspect of the project in which the Maoris of New Zealand and the Hereros of German South West Africa were exterminated in line with the imperatives of colonial ambition. Indeed, the notion that “imperialism had served civilization by clearing inferior races off the earth found widespread expression in nineteenth-century European thought, from natural sciences and philosophy to anthropology and politics” (Mamdani 2004:6). Genocide was always close to the heart of the imperial project but its violence and destructiveness were always 31

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rationalised by Western orders of knowledge and institutions of the archive that were devoted to the overall project of colonisation and domination. Similarly, a distinction was made between civilised wars and colonial wars. Therefore, “the laws of war applied to wars among the civilized nation-states, but laws of nature were said to apply to colonial wars, and the extermination of the lower races was seen as a biological necessity” (Mamdani 2004: 7). The genocidal aspect of the imperial project was also based on scientific knowledge. Indeed, “the German geneticist Eugen Fischer’s first medical experiments focused on a “science” of race mixing in concentration camps for the Herero. His subjects were both Herero and the offspring of Herero women and German men. Fischer argued that “mulattoes,” Herero-Germans born of mixed parentage, were physically and mentally inferior to their German parents” (Mamdani 2004: 8). In this instance, the supposed objectivity of science is cast aside for the overriding imperial agenda. In order to further the aims of science, the Herero subject was also feminised according to the underlying imperial logic. Hence, a binary colonial logic was instituted; German/male, Herero/female, science/ignorance, active/passive, developed/undeveloped etc. The binary logics of the colonial project were unequivocal, quite unsophisticated and also uncomplicated. Mamdani re-reads how the violence of this colonial logic works within the contemporary moment. Within the post-9/11 global political configuration, Mamdani strongly suggests that this very colonial logic is still very much in place. In the name of Culture Talk, categories such as premoderntiy and (post)modernity have been granted greater ideological - as well as emotional - force. Hence two contrasting notions of premodernity are advanced: “one thinks of premodern peoples as those who are not yet modern, who are either lagging behind or have yet to embark on the road to modernity. The other depicts the premodern as also the antimodern. Whereas the former conception encourages relations based on philanthropy, the latter notion is productive of fear and preemptive police or military action” (Mamdani 2004:18). Mamdani also advances the argument that “during the Cold War, Africans were stigmatized as the prime example of peoples not capable of modernity. With the end of the Cold War, Islam and the Middle East have displaced Africa as the hard premodern core in a rapidly globalizing world” (2004:19). Political 32

Federalism and Ethnicity in Nigeria: A Critical Exploration

Islam, Mamdani also suggests, is not a creation of Muslim fundamentalists. Rather, in its contemporary form, political Islam in its current violent phase emerged from the ashes of the Cold War. In his words, “political Islam was born in the colonial period. But it did not give rise to a terrorist movement until during the Cold War” (Mamdani 2004:14). Mamdani’s conclusions ought to be clear enough. The contemporary ideological categories of premodernity and (post)modernity are underpinned by an old colonial logic and, in the present age of advanced weapons systems, an extremely violent one. Also, politically, economically and technologically disempowered peoples within the current moment of contemporary globalisation are forced to partake in the same old colonial struggles over identities and representation. Mamdani’s focus on tropes of the premodern and the modern has many deep implications in the sense that we have to ponder the various possibilities for the construction of global peace and also a global political community. The 9/11 event forces us to address the dynamic of certain colonial logics in which the evident politicisation of culture is reinscribed between dichotomies of the (post)modern and premodern, rich and poor, North and South, citizen and subject, and which in turn call up spectres of vast inequalities and potential violence. Mamdani strongly suggests that there has been a return to barbarity into the project postmodern enlightenment. It is a suggestion that neoconservatives in the West may find rather disagreeable in these times of extreme moral difficulty. But even in the West, important figures are beginning to lend their voices to the main points of his argument. George Soros says, “President George W. Bush is endangering the United States and the world’s safety while undermining American values” (Mail & Guardian, October 22 to 28, 2004 p. 30). In the same article, he states, “the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001 required a strong response. But they also led to suspension of the critical process so essential to a democracy - a full and fair discussion of the issues. Bush silenced criticism by calling it unpatriotic (ibid.).” In the name of the protection of human rights, in the name of humanitarian aid, certain powers commit incredible violence and undermine the very concept of human rights, democracy, citizenship 33

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and sovereignty. On the one hand, the contemporary discourses of civic empowerment are mediatised out of proportion while within the very heart of virtual mediatisation, human agency and life become the targets of ceaseless and spectral destruction. These are the kinds of issues Mamdani’s politically charged book, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War and the Roots of Terror, compels us to consider. More importantly, Mamdani’s stance leads us to the knowledge that barbarity resides everywhere, within both premodernity and postmodernity. In other words, no sector of humanity is exempted from it. The politicisation of culture which Mamdani’s analysis addresses is at many moments just another term for the politicisation of ethnicity. In the final analysis, then, ethnicity is not the problem of only a few regions of the world. The very unpredictable nature of human mobility and intercourse is a vital factor in this regard. Second, there are other elements that can decide the parametres of an ethnic conflagration, apart from culture and politics. Religion, as we have noted, is a very potent ingredient as we hope to observe in the forms of ethnic conflict in Nigeria. Again, Mamdani’s thesis supports this view. The ethnic disturbances which occurred in May 1992 in ZangonKataf, Kaduna State were most certainly no minor affair. First, they demonstrated the extent to which the Nigerian state is willing to go to punish those it considers to be a menace to the federation. MajorGeneral Zamani Lekwot (rtd), former military governor of Rivers State, was in the eye of the communal storm. Lekwot, a prominent Kataf leader who rose to the top echelons of the Nigerian army, was singled out for punishment for the Zangon-Kataf communal clashes. The south of Kaduna State in northern Nigeria, the area in which the disturbances occurred, is widely known to have experienced some of the most violent cases of ethnic violence in the country. For example, there was the Kafanchan crisis of 1987. On the other hand, the ZangonKataf disturbances were basically ethno-religious in nature and the major actors were the Muslim Hausa-Fulani and the Kataf who are regarded as pagans by the former. But the religious coloration of the conflict must be noted along with the obviously ethnic dimension that was involved. In the crisis, several lives were lost and a considerable amount of property was destroyed. But what incensed the Babangida administration – which was then in power – the most was the perceived threat to the ethno-regional status quo. A dangerous 34

Federalism and Ethnicity in Nigeria: A Critical Exploration

precedent would have been set if strong punitive measures were not taken to forestall future reoccurrences. And so it promptly swung into action by setting up a tribunal headed by Justice Benedict Okadigbo (rtd). More radically and of course more arbitrarily, it also promulgated the Revised Edition (Laws of the Federation of Nigeria) (Supplementary Provisions) Decree No. 55 which made decrees passed by the military government superior to the federal constitution. In other words, the nation ceased to have a recognised constitutional basis and became in effect, a de facto martial law state, although this fact was obscured by clouds of rhetoric and propaganda professing an earnest intention to return to civilian rule. It was only time that gave the lie to these stratagems concocted by the government. Unable to accept the government’s disrespect for constitutional rules, G.O.K. Ajayi (SAN), the defence counsel withdrew his services, being a stickler for strict legalism which was increasingly becoming superfluous within the Nigerian context owing to the acts of military authorities. At the end of the charade that was called a trial, MajorGeneral Lekwot and five others - Major Atomic Kude (rtd), Yohanna Karau Kibor, Marcus Mamman, Yahaya Duniya, Julius Sarki and Zamman Dabo - were sentenced to death without right of appeal. The report of the proceedings was submitted to the Minister of Justice at the time, Clement Akpamgbo (SAN) and then referred to the National Defence and Security Council (NDSC). Immediately, the African Democratic League (ADL) led by the irrepressible Wole Soyinka, author and activist, started to denounce what appeared to be imminent judicial murders. Public protests denouncing the judgments also followed. And then human rights organisations like the Constitutional Rights Project (CRP) and the Universal Defenders of Democracy (UDD) took legal measures to forestall the impending executions. Eventually the Attorney-General, Mr. Clement Akpamgbo, announced a general amnesty for prisoners at the valedictory meeting of the National Defence and Security Council (NDSC). However, this was not before the religious undercurrents of the crisis were unearthed and transformed into instruments for national polarisation along largely ethnic and religious lines. Ibrahim Dasuki, the deposed Sultan of Sokoto and former President-General of the National Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA), in a statement released to the press over the death sentences was of the view that the law ought to be allowed to take its course. In effect, the death 35

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sentences were to be administered. More precisely, he branded the Katafs as “the perpetrators of the Zangon-Kataf genocide” and then later on maintained that the NSCIA wished “to affirm its unwavering and intrinsic commitment to the survival of the sovereignty and indivisibility of Nigeria“. On the issues of “sovereignty and indivisibility” of the nation there is a lot to be said, which I shall attempt to say in due course. That notwithstanding, on the other side of the religious divide, Christian clerics also reacted with the same degree of bruised pride and élan. Under the umbrella association called the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) they decried the partiality which influenced the administration of justice. In no equivocal terms, CAN specifically alleged that pogroms had been carried out upon Christians in Northern Nigeria and not a judicial finger had been lifted on each occasion. It became an instance of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Eventually, Lekwot and the others had their death sentences commuted to five-year jail terms and then, after a few years in prison, he was released by the Abacha regime. In spite of all the religious undertones, the Zangon-Kataf saga had the prominent markings of an ethnic conflict in addition to being fuelled by religious differences (Egwu, Salihu and Kure, 2003). To begin with, it was a confrontation between two distinct ethnic identities, one a dominant group and the other an evidently aggrieved minority, and both within the supposedly monolithic North. This questioned the very idea of a homogeneous Northern geographical and cultural entity and amplified the worrisome features of the nation’s multi-ethnicity. During the crisis, no precise strategy was devised to combat similar disturbances in the future. In the main, official responses were made on an ad-hoc basis, which means that the possibilities of such future clashes are indeed immense. This fact was borne out when an apparently minor incident in the ancient city of Kano triggered off a series of violent reactions. Gideon Akaluka was an Igbo trader who became a victim of the most atrocious form of mob justice, losing his life in process on December 26, 1994. The exact circumstances surrounding his death are not immediately clear but it was alleged that a woman in the compound in which he lived had torn off a page of the Quran to clean up her baby, thereby provoking an irate mob of Islamic fundamentalists. The tragedy and grotesqueness of Akaluka’s death had national reverberations. He had been mistaken for the husband of 36

Federalism and Ethnicity in Nigeria: A Critical Exploration

the “sacrilegious woman”. Akaluka was remanded in a Kano prison and then moved to another one to guarantee his safety but this did not deter the fundamentalists from locating him and gaining violent entry into his cell. He was then decapitated and his head was stuck on to a spear which was carried around the inner precincts of ancient Kano by a triumphant crowd. An Islamic service was later held in honour of “this feat of religious courage”. Equally disturbing was the fact that the concerned authorities could not prevent Akaluka’s tragic end. And from a broader perspective, the incident was a continuation of the spate of religious disturbances that began in the North with the 1980 Maitatsine riots in Kano (Watts, 2002) and others that occurred in Jimeta-Yola, Zaria, Katsina, Kaduna and Bauchi. From an ethnic viewpoint, a few theoretical perspectives can be strengthened. Eghosa Osaghae’s monograph entitled Trends in Migrant Political Organizations in Nigeria: The Igbo in Kano does a great deal to explain associational ethnicity among the Igbos. Associational ethnicity becomes necessary when migrants find themselves living away from their homelands. Needless to say, there are enormous cultural and religious differences between Northern Nigeria and Eastern Nigeria. As a result, events like the Akakula tragedy could occur and do occur frequently. So it becomes imperative for alienated ethnic groups to solidify their tribal/ethnic identities and goals for the purposes of collective survival. In Nigeria, there are several difficulties to surmount if one is living away from one’s homeland or state. And of course, statism has its origin in ethnicity. The divisiveness of ethnicity and statism is evident in the problems relating to employment opportunities, housing facilities, educational opportunities, medical care and the scramble for other basic amenities of existence that confronts a non-indigene. The only recourse, then, is to form tribal/ethnic unions to aid the development of both the individual and the collectivity. Rather than curb the problems and dilemmas of ethnicity, the creation of several states within the federation has worsened the problems of nepotism, clientelism and need one add, ethnicity. Since the nation at federal and state levels alienates the citizen, s/he in turn creates alternative social arrangements and comfort zones to regulate her/his existence and to minister to her/his needs (Fawole and Ukeje, 2005). These social formations are what provide the citizen with the succour and assistance the state is reluctant or is unable to provide. In 37

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this sense, they serve a crucial function and are likely to continue to endure as long people still feel disenfranchised by the state (Comaroff and Comaroff, 2000; Nyamnjoh, 2005; Simone, 2004). The rate at which associational ethnicity was increasing was demonstrated in early 1996 in Ibadan in a way that also introduced a new and disturbing angle. The Hausa-Fulani community in Ibadan numbering well over 300,000 (during the mid nineties) first moved to the city as early as 1839. But this long period of immersion in Western Nigeria had done nothing to weaken their ethnic identities, so that they had become to all intents and purposes an entrenched ethnic community in a separate cultural enclave. In the course of the widespread violence in 1996, property worth millions of naira was lost and the extent of the violence and destruction attracted the attention of the federal authorities. The principal disputants were the Sarkin Sasa, Katsina Maiyasin, who is the leader of the Hausa-Fulani community in Sasa, and his rival, Ali Zungeru, who is the head of the Hausa-Fulanis in Sabo. Maiyasin, at the time, had strong federal support (during the period the Abacha junta was in power) and was evidently an ambitious man and this, primarily, was what led him into a confrontation with both the Hausa-Fulanis and the indigenous community. Lamidi Adedibu, a prominent Ibadan politician, complained to the press about Maiyasin in this manner: He calls himself Sardauna of Yorubaland, parades himself as his royal highness, terrorizes Ibadan people and builds a caliphate parallel to the Olubadan of Ibadan. (The Guardian on Sunday, April 7, 1996).

Consequently, equally strong yet judicious measures on the part of the government were required to douse the embers of the imbroglio. But in this instance, what did the federal military government do? It sent a contingent of secret agents and a handful of military intelligence operatives to nip in the bud any threat to peace and make recommendations to the Presidency. Again, we note the perfunctory as well as arbitrary response to a crisis that possessed all the features of a major ethnic conflict. This was reflected in the complaint of a former Commissioner, an indigene of Ibadan: “Once again, the land of our great grandfathers may be hijacked by native imperial agents” (Guardian on Sunday, April 7, 1996). Fortunately, ethnic studies scholarship is immensely rich just as there many sites of ethnic conflict on the African continent. For 38

Federalism and Ethnicity in Nigeria: A Critical Exploration

instance, in Rwanda and Burundi, the Hutu and Tutsi have been locked in genocidal combat for decades. Similarly, nations like Mozambique, Angola, Liberia, Somalia, Zaire, Sierra-Leone and Algeria all have major ethnic problems. However, this does not make ethnic conflicts Third World concerns alone, for as Premdas observes “very few multi-ethnic states have designed an equitable system that is generally acceptable by all sections for their survival (1993: 12).” And so, in varying degrees, countries like the United Kingdom, Belgium, Canada, the United States of America and the nations of the former Soviet Union have ethnic conflicts. It has been argued that the management of ethnic conflicts in the industrialised nations is invariably better that what obtains in Third World nations (Osaghae, 1994a: 4). And because ethnic conflicts constitute a severe threat to global peace, several management models have been evolved. In post-apartheid South Africa, the question of race continues to be a major source of identitarian and political differences (Gibson, 2006; Greenberg, 2004) Osaghae identifies some of the models for managing ethnic conflicts thus: (1) the accommodation of diversities, allaying the fears of ethnic minorities, and protection of citizens; (2) the transformation of the perception of ethnic loyalties and values from being a threat to national cohesion to being utilized as an engine of development and positive social change; (3) the enhancement of democracy through application of the principle of equity in income distribution, land tenure, access to power and resources and political participation; and (4) the elimination of repression and terrorism as a means of solving the problems of ethnicity. Premdas (1993: 12), on the other hand, isolates certain categories, all of them negative, which are employed as models for ethnic management namely: (1) dependence; (ii) centralization, (iii) terror/surveillance; (iv) discrimination; (v) co-optation; (vi) segmentation; (vii) manipulation of ethnic symbols; and (viii) external linkage. The Caribbean region which serves as his major frame of reference has a lot in common with Africa by virtue of its also having experienced a similar colonial encounter, and the problems that inevitably emerge as a result of the dynamics of postcoloniality. Nigeria, with well over two hundred and fifty known ethnic groups, is still battling with most of problems of ethnicity and postcolonial political reconstruction. And so one is inclined to disagree when, for instance, Osaghae writes that Nigeria, “has developed 39

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perhaps the most elaborate system of ethnic management on the continent” (1994a: 26). Similarly, there are many reasons to doubt Michael D. Levin’s claim that: Nigerian politics and constitution making has transformed the state to a point where ethnic politics as such have been accommodated in the political system and although “sharing the national cake” remains central to politics, ethnicity is being muted in favour of regionalism and representation on the basis of population (1993:155).

The Ogoni crisis simply negates such assumptions. Equally false is the presupposition that ethnic conflicts can be totally eradicated. The very dynamics of social and political struggle tend to amplify the spectre of ethnic conflicts. As long as various ethnic groups within a multi-ethnic context have to jostle for scarce employment opportunities, inadequate protocols and stipulations of revenue allocation, basic amenities of existence and of course the kind of political power in which winner-takes-all, ethnic agitations will not cease to occur. Africa, by the realities of its political landscape, will continue to be a fertile site for ethnic conflicts since forms of authoritarianism still prevail, and also because of its relatively weak practices and traditions of contemporary democracy. African modes of governance usually pay little heed to problems pertaining to minority rights, and when they respond to these, it is usually through autocratic and repressive means. Studies have shown that these kinds of approaches only aggravate ethnic tensions. There are, of course, many other factors that generate tensions or apprehensions of an ethnic origin. If we look at the case of Nigeria, this is also true as well. Most indications, sadly, reveal that the nation’s capacities to effectively manage ethnic problems are rapidly being eroded in spite of all the measures – most of them merely cosmetic – taken by the government to check the situation. A few reasons should suffice to lend sufficient weight to this assertion. Osaghae, for instance, makes an observation that the federal character principle, rather than resulting in the much-needed devolution and decentralisation of federal power, has continued to further the political dominance of the Hausa-Fulanis (1992:225). Again, he notes that Northern military officers control the nation’s armed forces (although this assertion ought to be qualified as circumstances of political expediency can change the stakes abruptly and we also have to note that this view was expressed 40

Federalism and Ethnicity in Nigeria: A Critical Exploration

prior to the democratic dispensation that commenced in 1999) (ibid.230) However the fact remains that many of the ingredients necessary for the eruption of ethnic conflicts continue to exist within the Nigerian polity. In his article titled “Managing Ethnicity Under Democratic Transition in Nigeria: The Promise, the Failure and the Future”, Osaghae argues that “the key to democratic stability and effective ethnic management lies in economic development which involves emphasis on production of resources rather than on distributing those controlled by the state” (ibid.230). Hence, economic development, as it were, provides a major point of departure in solving the problems associated with ethnic strife. What then were Nigeria’s chances for economic advancement during the height of the Ogoni crisis? According to a report made by the Manufacturers’ Association of Nigeria (MAN) for the first half of 1996, the signals from the financial and manufacturing sectors were quite gloomy. The report stated that the industrial capacity utilisation for the year 1995 dropped to 27.0 per cent in comparison to 27.4 per cent recorded for the year before. Similarly, the chances that industrial performance would be better in 1996 were very slim. Some of the reasons adduced for the poor performances were lack of policy co-ordination, tardiness in the implementation of measures designed to stimulate economic activities and uncertainties surrounding the clearing of goods at the ports. Another problem identified by the report was persistent inflation and static income growth for the wage/salary earners which consequently affected drastically the productive capacities of the manufacturing sector. This situation has not changed much since 1996 when the study was conducted and in fact in some cases, it has become worse. There are also enduring problems such as the massive disinvestments of international capital, the collapse of a large segment of the banking industry and a general lack of confidence in the economic environment that remain to be solved. It would not be correct, however, to assume that the government is totally unaware of the dangers that destructive ethnicity pose to the polity. First, if it was so unaware, it would not have created the States and Local Governments Creation and Boundary Adjustment Committee with a highly respected accountant, Arthur Mbanefo as its Chairman 1995. Second, the restless agitations for the creation of more states could simply not be ignored. And then, finally, the entire 41

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exercise could become a political weapon for the government in terms of gratifying certain segments of the nation and also punishing other political communities. In short, it can be used as an instrument of government patronage and disapproval. It was from this background that the Committee set to work. Within six months of it existence, the Mbanefo-led Committee received 80 requests for the creation of more states of which it sanctioned 45 as viable. There were, on the other hand, over 2,000 requests made for creation of councils out of which 1,800 were found approvable. After a hectic nationwide tour, Mbanefo revealed that he had been amply provided with “knowledge of the complex historical, ethnic and structural diversity obtaining in our beloved country” (The Guardian, Saturday, April 27, 1996). In structurally and ethnically diverse nations like Nigeria, it is easy for several ethnic groups to become alienated from the centre, hence the daunting plethora of requests for the creation of states and local government councils. The objective for most aggrieved segments of the polity is to obtain a better share of the “national cake”. The unrests and agitations also reveal in their various dimensions the peoples’ psychology regarding federalism and the popular perceptions regarding the nation. The vast majority of people evidently feel disenfranchised by seemingly omnipotent federal power. This lack of confidence in the existing federal structure has transformed the people’s psychology, reducing the nation to one plagued by mistrust, insecurity and harmful competition. It is now time to locate the beginnings of this federal structure within the Nigerian context and also some of its major characteristics in the course of its development. We have noted much earlier that the British colonial administration introduced a form of regionalism for reasons of bureaucratic expediency and economic necessity. On attaining independence in 1960, Nigeria began full-fledged constitutional federalism which it sought to manage as best as it knew. However, the decisive January 15 military coup of 1966 occurred. Nothing would be the same again. Since then, often bloody military takeovers have become predominant features of the nation’s contemporary political history. Constitutionally, the coup which launched Major-General Aguyi-Ironsi into power also introduced unitarianism as an integral component of governance through Decree No. 34 of 1966. Structurally, this proved very problematic. In several parts of the country, the January 1966 coup was seen primarily as a 42

Federalism and Ethnicity in Nigeria: A Critical Exploration

mutiny led, all said and done, by Eastern military officers. Elaigwu puts it more appropriately:

Isawa

In a way, Ironsi was a creature of circumstances – a prisoner of a coup that had been undertaken (largely) by his kinsmen, the Ibo officers, under Nzeogwu. Unfortunately, the political and military leaders killed during the coup, except for Col. Unegbe were mainly from Northern and Western Regions. General Ironsi had called the January coup Majors, “mutineers”, but they were mutineers on whose backs he had ridden to power. Moreover, the initial enthusiasm about the coup, particularly in the South, made heroes of the plotters; in the North, the plotters were criminals who should have been punished (1979:162).

As to be expected, another coup was staged in July 1966 by the Northern officers through which Lt. Col. Yakubu Gowon became the Head of State. However, Lt. Col. Emeka Ojukwu of the Eastern Region refused to accept Gowon’s authority and this marked the embryonic stages of what would turn out to be a thirty month long civil war. But before we proceed, let us put the issue of federalism itself in its proper perspective. A federation succinctly is “a process of bringing about a dynamic equilibrium between the centrifugal and centripetal forces in a society, and it entails continuous adjustments between the federal government and the governments of the component units” (Elaigwu, 1979: 159). It clearly demands a certain democratic spirit as well as the imperative of political decentralisation. This, arguably, had not occurred in many of the political scenarios emerging from Nigeria. Gowon was averse to a unitarian system of government yet his misgivings about it did not allay the apprehensions of Ojukwu. At the Aburi meeting held in Ghana in January 1967 to work out the modalities for peace, both leaders agreed that: the Army is to be governed by the Supreme Military Council – the Chairman of which was to be the Head of the Federal Military Government and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces; a military headquarters in which each region was to be represented, was to be set up under a Chief of Staff; in each region was to be established an Area Command, under an Area Commander; the Supreme Military Council (SMC) was to deal with all matters of appointment and promotions of people in executive posts in the

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Armed forces and the Police; and Military Governments for the duration of that Military Government were to have control over Area Commands in the regions, for purposes of internal security.

Apart from these major points of agreement, there were some other areas in which they reached an “understanding” such as appointments into diplomatic and consular posts, the higher cadres of the Armed Forces and the Police and also the top echelons of the Federal Civil Service which were all to be determined by the SMC. However, both Gowon and Ojukwu misinterpreted the clauses of the agreement. For Ojukwu, the agreement meant an unequivocal devolution of powers while Gowon saw it as being an attempt to return to the “constitutional position before January 17, 1966” (Elaigwu, 1979: 156). What appeared to have been a quest for constitutional legalism despite all appearances to the contrary was also an undisguised power tussle in which personal ambitions played an undeniably crucial role. It was this over-zealous jostling for federal power on the one hand and the desire for more autonomous regions on the other that resulted in the bloody civil war of 1967 which did not end until 1970. The Biafran war, which Ojukwu lost, created, as a matter of consequence, an infinitely more pronounced concentration of powers at the federal level. So Gowon’s boast of “no victor, no vanquished” was obviously, in some respects, the posturing and condescension of a triumphant military conqueror, if not a somewhat naïve recasting of a major Nigerian political event. There are three determinants of the post-civil war political dispensation: (i) the military; (ii) the increase in petro-naira (i.e. revenues from petroleum oil); and (iii) the creation of additional states (Elaigwu, 1979:168). All these have resulted in more ways than one in what Isawa Elaigwu calls “military federalism”. His definition of it is as follows: Military federalism in Nigeria has two conspicuous features. The first is the military superstructrure: a military regime in which institutions of popular participation are suspended. In the military hierarchy of authority, the Head of the Federal Military Government appoints all the State Governors who are responsible to him. This negates the traditional principle of federalism and fits into Apter’s model of mobilization with a hierarchical chain of command and “minimum accountability” to the people (ibid.151).

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Federalism and Ethnicity in Nigeria: A Critical Exploration

This view, in essence, reveals the dimensions of the Nigerian federal structure. Over time, all these attributes have become more enlarged, so much so that statist/regional autonomy has now become a virtual impossibility. In other words, the Nigerian civil war did not resolve the perennial issue of federal devolution of powers. Instead, there has been an even greater concentration of federal powers at the centre because of the peculiar characteristics of military rule. Militarism requires extreme centralisation of political authority and forces. Force, essentially, is its raison d’être. This fact was demonstrated by the fall of the Yakubu Gowon regime. The military governors came to wield more political power than was good for the federal seat. Governors paraded themselves like autonomous dukes in their domains and values such as governmental responsibility and public accountability were simply ignored. Indeed, the failure of that administration is attributable in part to this factor. The major point, however, is that the Nigerian civil war did not lead to enhancement of the constitutional features of federalism. But there is also another aspect of ethnicity that was brought to the fore and which, paradoxically, can be easily overlooked. This relates to the aspect of the ethno-nationalistic component within the Biafran side of civil war. The Eastern Nigerian bid to secede is viewed as “the most defined episode of ethno-nationalism in Nigerian history” (Levin, 1993:156). And yet this historic attempt was also ridden with the same political chauvinism from which it sought to escape. To begin with, the Eastern Region minorities accounted for between 40 and 50 per cent of the population (ibid.). And as the Igbos, who were the majority ethnic group, agitated for self-determination, the minorities also began to feel uncomfortable with their marginal status within the Eastern enclave. In fact, the drive to overcome this perceived marginalisation began as far back as the 1950s (ibid.). Michael Leven’s article “Biafra and Bette: Ethnonationalism and Self-Determination in Nigeria” is a useful exposition of the suppressed ethno-nationalistic dimensions of the civil war as they pertain to the Bette, an ethnic minority. He writes: The ethnodrama of victimization, of mob and military murders affected them differently. Bette were not Igbo; they had suffered as Easterners in some places, but had been distinguished from the Igbo in others. In Biafra, Igbo chauvinism competed with Eastern or Biafran, solidarity. Igbo policemen, Igbo officials, Igbo shopkeepers

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and traders represented a dominant majority; the Igbo language became a symbol of solidarity that the English-speaking Bette elite had to reject (Levin, 1993:163).

This, indeed, is the tragedy of the Igbo ethnonationalistic quest. It was incapable of the required degree of self-critique to ensure that the well-being and interests of the minorities within its sphere of influence were adequately maintained. Henceforth, minorities within the old Eastern region would always seek to avoid the generally assumed Igbo proclivity to dominate less prominent ethnicities. The need to dominate, though, is not exclusive to any ethnic group. It is merely a crude imperative of virtually all modes of social and political existence. The federal structure as it is now constituted is a glaring reflection of this fact. To return to an issue raised much earlier: Ibrahim Dasuki, the former Sultan of Sokoto had, whilst urging that death penalties be visited upon the defendants charged with causing the Zangon-Kataf crisis, made a pledge to uphold “the sovereignty and indivisibility of Nigeria”. The “indivisibility of Nigeria” is a boastful yet ominous phrase that has frequently emanated from the often alienating precincts of Nigerian officialdom. The fact that Nigeria is only just “a geographical expression”, as Obafemi Awolowo had called the country, only mattered according to changing political circumstances. It will be recalled that Sir Ahmadu Bello, also one of the architects of modern Nigeria, was skeptical about the possibilities of accomplishing national and federal unity. Apparently, the repressive might of military federalism was what kept the Nigerian nation together for such a long time. Of course, with the advent of the oil boom, geographical dismemberment became highly anathema. Economic factors fuelled by governmental greed no doubt have been and continue to be the underlying motive for keeping the nation united. So by extension, the ideology of nationalism was often deployed by military leaders to maintain the obviously anomalous political status quo. But if we examine the history of nationalist ideology in Europe, useful revelations are bound to emerge. Germany and Italy for instance were products of intense nationalist fervour, but this did not hinder (in some instances) them from injuring the nationalistic pride and aspirations of other nations. And Kalim Siddiqui states: “it is also important to note that every inch of European soil is soaked in human 46

Federalism and Ethnicity in Nigeria: A Critical Exploration

blood spilled over the drawing of the frontiers of modern nationstates” (1994:14). Africa, on the other hand, did not have to undergo the traumatic ordeal of the European-type nation-building process by virtue of the colonial legacy. Nonetheless, the postcolonial configurations of wars, genocidal conflicts and deterritorialisation are rapidly changing this legacy (Mbembe, 2000). Indeed, that legacy is in several respects an equally bitter one. The price of maintaining the colonial inheritance of geography lies in the contradictory and anomalous geographical formations that constitute African postcolonial territoriality (Soyinka, 1999b). The enormity of this political and territorial anomaly can be observed at numerous levels which range from the self-nullifying cases of ethnic chauvinism to the worst instances of uneven development and inability to form a strategic vision of governance and territoriality that African peoples can move towards on the basis of praxis. Factors such as these have plunged the continent into instances of cultural and political stasis. We should also have noted that in the chaos of the postcolonial situation, new technologies of domination have emerged. We also have in existence what have been termed war economies. The European experience with nation-building ought to teach us a few lessons. First, the nationalist ideologies can become quite reductive. There are also virulent forms of nationalism such as fascism and Nazism which eventually culminated in the horrors of the Second World War. And finally and more importantly: “African nationalism was the product not of a Kleistian chauvinism but of a mixture of antiracism and, which amounted in practice to the same thing, of anticolonialism” (Davidson, 1993:165). This is a major difference between African and European forms of nationalism. African statesmen such as Julius Nyerere, Kwame Nkrumah, Nnamdi Azikwe and Obafemi Awolowo, who defined the shape of the anti-colonial struggles and who also inherited the legacies of colonialism, all understood the contrasts and shared characteristics between these two different kinds of nationalism. Their shortcoming, essentially, was the inability to evolve feasible strategies to pull out the continent from the quagmire of the colonial legacy and also to successfully address the challenges posed by project of modernity (Wiredu, 1996; Hountondji, 2002). Nonetheless, their political education and preparedness was infinitely better than that of the present-day military and pseudo-military adventurists who hold a 47

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significant proportion of the continent in thrall. Consequently, when phrases such as “the indivisibility of the nation” are bandied about, it shows an acute lack of historical insight as well as a disturbing immodesty. Having made these observations, we may now return to the issue of federalism in Nigeria. One cannot but agree that there still exists “a sense of structural alienation under the present federal system” (Suberu, 1992:316). If that is the case, then measures that can be taken to ameliorate the situation include “the institution of a marketdecentralist approach of federal governance; the rationalization or depoliticization of revenue allocation and population census exercises; the reconstruction, revitalization and fortification of the local government system; the reorganization of state and local boundaries on a more ethnically equitable and politically acceptable basis; the resolution of the place of religion in the federal political process; and the federalization of the party systems” (ibid.). The measures enumerated above were those that the Babangida administration needed to undertake, but after eight years of political chicanery and rhetoric, all the regime’s efforts at democratisation turned out to be fruitless. In other words, the June 12 presidential crisis was the devastating outcome of many years of hope and patience on the part of the citizenry. The Abacha military regime was an unfortunate creation of the debacle of the Babangida administration and both dictatorships had many features in common (Osha, 2004). This is particularly true with regard to their various approaches to the nation’s problems. The days of undue political optimism are understandably over after the disappointments of the two regimes. Initially, when the Abacha administration secured power through the palace coup of November 1993, it promulgated the Constitution and Modification Decree 107 in that same year which suspended the national constitution. This, needless to say, proved to be a dramatic shift in the much-publicised democratisation process. Again, instead of adhering to the provisions of the draft constitution which was derived from the constitutional conference of 1995, the government elected to forge ahead through military decrees. Observant political commentators and critics wondered why the administration was so insistent on governance by decrees if it was really sincere about the transition-to-civil-rule process. And when the local government 48

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elections were conducted during the first quarter of 1996, there was a spate of indiscriminate disqualifications of electoral candidates on the grounds that they were security risks. These acts on the part of the government were repetitions of those carried out previously by the Babangida regime. In terms of approach and psychology, they had a lot in common. The Abacha regime, just as the Babangida-led junta, was unwilling to evolve a definable constitutional structure for the democratic future of the nation as evidenced by its numerous prevarications and deliberate reversals. The architecture of governance was thus determined by the over-centralisation of power; Similarly, there was also the disturbing and perennial tendency for the military to subordinate the federal administration system to a unified command structure, the arbitrary and repeated dissolutions or redeployment by the centre of the leadership at state and local levels and the creation and proliferation of new and increasing unviable states and local areas by military fiat…(Suberu, 1992: 322).

This constant feature of military federalism is, by all estimations, an enormous impediment to any democratisation process as oncoming civilian regimes usually do very little to transform or overcome the limitations of military governance. Also, military federalism often creates a structural and political vacuum for incoming civilian political arrangements. Put differently, democratic rule often becomes a victim of political schizophrenia since there is inevitably the dilemma of how to forge new credible structures of political legitimacy out of a counterproductive history of authoritarian, anti-democratic and consequently antithetical political structures and modes of organisational activity. These preoccupations were among the major contentions of an international conference on “Constitutions and Federalism” held in April 1996 at Lagos. That conference could not have been timelier since it was able to evince just how far the nation was from achieving proper federalism and the consolidation of democractic practices. As noted earlier, Nigeria did not have a workable constitution during the most of the military era and the draft constitution that emerged from the conference of 1995 was termed “tentative”. It was this tentative draft that a constitution review committee then proceeded to work on before handing it over to the government for final amendments and approval. Thus, the country’s constitutional future rested solely with the military 49

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regime in spite of the furore of convening a constitutional conference. In other words, the proceedings of the constitutional conference were conducted in a manner that was unorthodox and arbitrary. Even at the level of conceptual and ideological clarity, the draft constitution left a lot to be desired. For instance, there were provisions for the offices of president, deputy president, prime minister, deputy prime minister, senate president and speaker of the house of representatives. In a paper delivered at the international conference on “Constitutions and Federalism”, entitled “History of ConstitutionMaking: The African Experience”, Samuel Gyandoh, a Ghananian Professor of Law, had stated in connection with Nigeria’s constitutional experiment: I am particularly impressed by the great care that seems to have been taken to ensure that whatever emerges at the end of the day will have been thoroughly considered by the widest spectrum of informed citizenry of Africa’s most populous country (The Guardian on Sunday, April 28, 1996).

This view, thankfully, was quickly discountenanced by most participants at the conference. In fact, someone termed the nation’s constitution-making exercise as “constitution-imposition” masterminded by the military. Musa Yakubu, a professor at the Faculty of Law at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, who was also a member of the Committee on Devolution of Powers, pointed out that “unless the power and these posts (the president-prime minister model) are clearly spelt out, it will be a model with disastrous implications for this country” (The Guardian on Sunday, April 28, 1996). Gyandoh’s optimism about Nigeria’s “constitution-imposition” process as conducted by the Abacha regime reminds one of Basil Davidson’s optimism in relation to the Babangida-engineered two-party system which tragically miscarried. The country took long to recover from the annulment of the June 12 presidential polls and the multiple fallouts of that political fiasco. More importantly, the participants at the conference made the following observations: ♦

that the military is incapable of promoting democratic culture and true federalism owing to its unitary command structure;

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Federalism and Ethnicity in Nigeria: A Critical Exploration

♦

♦

♦ ♦

♦

♦

♦

♦

♦

♦

♦

♦

♦

that prolonged military rule has affected the psyche of civilians and the political class in such a way that they operate like the military, thereby creating opportunities for the military’s return to power; that all state administrators are on command posting and dare not question the authority of their Commander-in-Chief in Abuja; that there is a limit to using military force to hold a federation together; that true federalism empowers the federating units to keep their resources while contributing an agreed percentage to the central government; for democracy to have meaning, it must not only involve majority rule but also guarantee the protection of minority rights; that discrimination, inequality and injustice by rulers are the main sources of grievances by ethnic minorities. Tokenism may not amount to protection of minority rights, hence federal character in practice may not address the minority problem; that militarism and federalism are opposing systems. Therefore, the term federal military government as we have it today is a misnomer. The military has killed federalism in Nigeria; that the 1995 draft constitution could not be so termed since it is still the subject of a fierce debate which might lead to fundamental modifications; that the creation of conflicting offices like president, vicepresident, prime minister, deputy prime minister portends ill for the future; that the provisions on revenue do not reflect the thinking in modern states on revenue generation, allocation and utilization in a federal structure; that the revenue allocation formula during the preindependence era was generally more satisfactory because it accorded more with the principles of federalism; that incessant demand for states is due to the absence of good governance and inequitable distribution of resources. These factors are exploited by unscrupulous politicians in order to satisfy personal ambition; and finally; that constitutions should flow from the organic culture and philosophical input of the people through, possibly, a sovereign national conference.

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We might as well add a few other observations of ours. Mass participatory politics remains a problematic issue within the current Nigerian political culture since a monologic and a corrupting conception and instrumentalisation of power are predominant characteristics of Nigeria state. The military used the excuse of nationalism to mask inequitable sociopolitical relations without obviously being aware of the horrendous abuses the ideology has suffered during the last century. Nationalist sentiments have been persistently aroused to undermine any attempts to review the federal arrangement. Federalism has also become the instrument of majoritarian domination in Nigeria. Finally, the current federal structure can only lead to more separatist agitations, intra-ethnic distrust and perhaps even national disintegration. The most appropriate response to these imminent dangers would be a more equitable federal structure. In clearer terms, militarism which became the entrenched mode of governance in Nigeria made it impossible to adequately problematise some important issues. It is necessary to evaluate the entire federal structure but this has not been successfully done; it is imperative that the grievances of ethnic minorities be addressed in a way that they do not feel alienated from the country; it is also important to create the kind of sociopolitical environment that fosters a multiplicity of debates regarding the political future of the country. All these were not possible under military rule. The result of these shortcomings is that the political leaders of the nation continue to prod all and sundry along with a dismissive sense of political expediency that destroys even existing political institutions and which is negligent of accepted standards of political behaviour. The consequences of this kind of attitude are quite numerous within the Nigerian context. For instance, it can be argued that this kind of attitude eventually led to the civil war. Indeed the ingredients for national disintegration are never far. Multi-ethnicity, militarism and the problems of instituting an acceptable version of federalism led to the Nigerian civil war. Let us now examine some of the legacies of the civil war. The anguish, anger and frustrations caused by the Nigerian civil war (1967-1970) are very much present within the current Nigerian sociopolitical milieu. This view was evident during most of the sessions of the international conference on the “Nigerian Civil War and 52

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its Aftermath” organised by the Programme on Ethnic and Federal Studies (PEFS), University of Ibadan, in September 2001. Some of the papers of the conference have now been published in a book (see also, Madiebo, [1980] on other aspects of the civil war). General Yakubu Gowon, (rtd.), the Nigerian military ruler who was saddled with the task of persecuting the war gave the keynote address at the conference. The late Lt. Col. Philip Effiong (rtd.), the rebel leader whose place it was in history to surrender on behalf of the Biafran side, was also present. Judging from some of the chapters of the book The Nigerian Civil War and its Aftermath (2001), which was edited by Eghosa E. Osaghae, Ebere Onwudiwe and R.T. Suberu, there are expressions of a considerable degree of suppressed anger and bitterness formed along ethnic lines. Ethnicity within the context of the discourses on the Nigerian civil war is often elevated to the level of mythology in which useful theoretical reflection recedes and what appears to be metaphysical immersion becomes more or less the order of things. General Yakubu Gowon’s view is just one of the typical strands of the narratives of nationhood and also one that supports the hegemonic discourse regarding the war. He downplays the importance of the Aburi Accord in which he had played a prominent role as a negotiator. In addition, Gowon views the expression, “the Nigerian civil war” as a misnomer, in other words, an unhappy term that was coined and imposed on Nigerians by “political commentators”. On the contrary, he prefers terms such “police action”, “military action”, and “full military action”. Other officially approved terminologies include the so-called “no victor, no vanquished” principle. Finally, it is Gowon’s view that the wounds of the war have healed. Of course, nothing can be further from the truth. Philip Effiong’s stance on the war is markedly dissimilar from Gowon’s. The book, more than anything else, unmasks the hidden and more unsavoury dimensions of the war. In this regard, the plight of the numerous ethnic minorities that suffered as a result of the war needs to be more fully studied. We need to revisit the many allegations of needless and unreported brutality by the Nigerian federal troops on largely unarmed civilians. For instance, Stanley Okafor’s chapter, “The Nigerian Army and the “Liberation” of Asaba: A Personal Narrative,” is a moving account of the ordeal of the indigenes of Asaba. From his account, it can be argued that the federal troops carried out what is 53

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akin to a deliberate policy of genocide in the area. Okafor claims that there are mass graves littered all over Asaba. If this is the case, then perhaps the contemporary discourse on truth and reconciliation can be applied here. Furthermore, it goes on to demonstrate that several expanses of recent Nigerian history remain unreconciled. Judging from the competing views of the war, Gowon’s account becomes a bland typification of the official stance on it. Within the general thrust of the discourses on the national tragedy, there is the implied suggestion that there is a necessity for a multi-layered deconstruction of the official stance in order to include marginal but important views of the war. Some of the chapters possess the required degree of scholarly gravity and authority. For instance, Adigun Agbaje’s chapter, “The War and the Nigerian State,” tries to set itself above the fractiousness, lack of distancing and passion that characterise the debates on the war. According to him, “the Nigerian state, and access to it, came to be perceived in ethnic-regional and religious terms. The idea of a technocratic, rational, objective state literally disappeared in the heat of passion and thereafter, creating in the popular mind a hierarchy of citizenship got defined by ethnic regional, religious and allied affiliations” (2001:27). More decisively, he concludes that “more than three decades after the war ended, national unity remains on the agenda for the future, and agitations for self-determination by many groups across the country have become part of political landscape” (2001: 29). On the other hand, Irene Pogoson’s contribution probes the international dimensions of the war. It also traces the evolution and maturation of the national foreign policy initiatives before and after the war. Ebere Onwudiwe’s chapter, “International Reactions to the Nigerian Civil War” is also a highly informative effort which is able to incorporate a lot of recently declassified material by the security agencies of the United States. Through the correspondence of different security operatives, we see how the major foreign policy decisions were made by the United States and also the United Kingdom. Such declassified information displays the vagaries and intricacies of international relations. On the other hand, the late M.C.K. Ajuluchuku’s chapter is rather unsatisfactory given his usual brilliance as it is a mere rehash of undifferentiated ethnic chauvinism and poorly assembled intellectual material. Indeed, we require more balanced analyses of the marginalisation of the Igbo than Ajuluchuku presents. 54

Federalism and Ethnicity in Nigeria: A Critical Exploration

The kind of critique one has in mind is evident in Ime Ikiddeh’s account of the Ibibio experience of the war which nudges us to reconsider another important dimension of the war. While some starved and endured the worst of privations, others engaged in gratuitous merry-making. Thus the impacts and effects of the war were varied and uneven throughout the country. However, an important ethnic viewpoint is left out of the book even though it was copiously entertained during the conference from which the book emerged. The volume fails to give an account of the Benin experience. Uyi Usuanlele, a promising scholar of history from Benin, for instance, argues that mainstream academic historical discourse was manipulated to denigrate the achievements of the Old Benin kingdom in favour of the Igbo. He employs a large body of historical material to illustrate how the political fortunes of the Mid-West took shape not only in relation to the Igbo but also within the context of the Nigerian federation. Unfortunately, this account is not included in the book. Wale Adebanwi, Nosa Owens-Ibie and Ayo Olukotun examine how the mass media have been a major factor in shaping the various discursive fortunes of the war. Remy Oriaku, on the other hand, analyses a significant part of the huge body of creative literature produced on account of the war. Both the book and the conference that preceded it demonstrate that Nigerians had not fully imbibed the lessons of the war. Also, more work needs to be done regarding the competing narratives on the war and the strategies for the critical reception of them. Ethnonationalism still rages in the sore and raw streets of Nigeria and this makes the history of the civil war an importance locus for collective selfexamination. The book reflects the multiple frustrations of Nigerians on the questions of national unity, federalism, militarism and the ways in which political and ethnic chauvinisms together with various kinds of political fundamentalisms are addressed. The fragile unity of the country is evident in the renewed and intricate struggles over resource control in the Niger Delta and the prevarications of the Olusegun Obasanjo administration over the matter. There is certainly a great deal to be learnt from the civil war. The Nigerian nation is plagued by the potentially catastrophic sociopolitical divisions brought about by ethnicity, religion and class. Ethnic struggles continue to threaten the unity of the federation long after the civil war. Let us now examine how the politics of ethnicity works within the Nigerian context. 55

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The Virtualisation of Ethnicity The Programme of Ethnic and Federal Studies (PEFS), University of Ibadan embarked on an ethnic mapping project that sought to situate within much clearer conceptual categories the question of ethnicity in Nigeria and its various dimensions, gradations, and thematics. Indeed, it was quite an ambitious project. Undoubtedly, several works on ethnicity in Nigeria had been produced and for the project launched by PEFS to go beyond available literature, it needed to have an added twist and also a much broader and deeper significance. The first volume of the project, Ethnic Groups and Conflicts in Nigeria, volume one, is made up of contributions by Eghosa E. Osaghae, Onigu Otite, Chris O. Ikporukpo and a nonacademic practitioner, Major-General Ishola Williams (rtd.). The volume establishes the various thrusts of the project in terms of conceptual, empirical, linguistic and geographical frameworks. According to Osaghae, “the ethnic mapping project was designed to remedy the observed flaws in the study of ethnicity and its management in Nigeria and produce an accurate and authoritative account of Nigeria’s complex ethnic situation that will, hopefully, serve as a point of reference for (future) studies of the phenomenon and attempts at managing it” (2001: 7). Osaghae also points out that the research effort is to be conducted on the basis of the six geo-political zones created by the regime of the former Nigerian military ruler, General Sani Abacha. He mentions other defining parametres of the project in terms of periodisation and temporality. For instance, precolonial, colonial and postcolonial time frames are to be employed together with discursive signposts such as the civil war (1967- 1970), the June 12 presidential crisis of 1993 and the intense pro-democracy struggles which came in its wake. Onigu Otite’s contribution is an apt summation of his invaluable work on the discourse of ethnicity spanning several years. From a purely theoretical and sociological point of view, an informative account of the state of the literature is provided. Thus, in academic terms, Otite’s chapter has immense value. Ethnic conflicts within the contemporary Nigerian context, we are told, are often generated by acrimonious competition for scarce public resources and for positions of power. Throughout the two volumes of the ethnic mapping project, this is an ever recurring theme. In describing the broad theoretical 56

Federalism and Ethnicity in Nigeria: A Critical Exploration

thrusts of the regime of discourses regarding ethnicity, Otite writes: … we have moved a long way from tribal empire building studies, as if they were isolates to the contemporary situation of how ethnic groups develop and maintain their systems of symbols as strategies of self-assertion and of attaining access to limited political and economic resources in a competitive national context (2001: 35).

Francis Egbokhare’s contribution examines the ethnic question from a linguistic angle. Indeed, language is a key variable in the discourse of ethnicity and Egbokhare’s chapter is in part a demonstration of why this is so. Furthermore, the complex character of Nigeria’s ethnic configuration is underscored when we are informed that Nigeria has between 394 and 500 languages. Obviously, our linguists have an enormous amount of work to accomplish in the area of investigating and classifying these various languages. Processes of territorialisation and deterritorialisation are implicated in the discourse of ethnicity as Chris Ikporukpo, a geographer suggests. In attempts to define a particular ethnic group, we need to determine the nature, size and morphological features of its given territory. But processes of territorialisation are not constant as they are subject to political actors who strive to attain sectarian advantage otherwise known as gerrymandering. Ikporukpo goes on to enumerate the conceptual difficulties that face the geographer in an effort to map out territories. He concludes, by stating that “various aspects of a number of ethnic groups, particularly the small ones, have not been reliably mapped” (2001: 62). Again, this is a problem that one hopes an ethnic mapping project would not only address but also resolve. General Ishola Williams’ (rtd.) contribution is quite remarkable for having an unexpected academic quality given his background as a military officer. Not only is he aware of the current state of literature in the field, but he also possesses “a practitioner’s perspective” of the emergent problems and dimensions within the discourse. In addition, more than any other contribution in this volume, General Williams’ chapter attempts a truly active engagement with contemporary developments regarding Nigerian ethnicities from both theoretical and practical perspectives. In order to realise in the broadest terms the objectives of an ethnic mapping project, Williams’ points out, “it will require a big research heart and sustained financial, physical 57

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and intellectual efforts” (2001: 72). Indeed the first volume of the ethnic mapping project identifies the nature and problems of ethnicity in Nigeria along broad conceptual and empirical lines. It is now up to researchers to appropriate these parametres for greater results. The second volume of Ethnic Groups and Conflicts in Nigeria, written by Okechukwu Ibeanu and Godwin Onu, achieves precisely what a project on ethnic mapping ought to be about. First, they erect a rigorous theoretical framework. In this way, we come to distinguish the difference between the primordialist and constructionist approaches to ethnicity. On this, they write that “there is a tendency for primordialists to confuse an individual’s emotive subjectivity (feeling, consciousness, etc.) towards an ethnic identity with its innateness” (2001: 3). They also point out that “constructionists argue that ethnic identities are not inherited like skin colour, but constructed like an art object” (2001: 4). In pursuing this theoretical angle, we note in addition that there is a Hegelian perspective to the instrumentalisation of identities where the dimension between identity-in-itself and identity-for-itself has to be taken into account. Having established this particular theoretical structure they employ a plethora of social science practices by way of oral interviews, group focus discussions, graphs and methods of data analysis to explain the genealogies, features, and contemporary and possible future trends of the ethnic character of the South-east zone of Nigeria. Employing all these methods, we come to realise that most of our general assumptions regarding ethnicity in the South-east region are indeed erroneous. We often assume that a myth of unanimity (a term made popular the Beninese philosopher Paulin J. Hountondji), that is, a generally consensual form of politics, a homogeneous construction of collective identity, and an undiscriminating articulation of ethnicity, exist in the region. However, the truth is that no such myth exists and there are virulent instances of contestation about who is and who isn’t Igbo. There are also often disturbing conflicts over land in which questions of identity are virulently politicised. In spite of the alienation and sometimes violent individualism fostered by processes of modernisation and contemporary globalisation, ethnicity (in its socalled pre-modern forms) exists and thrives among the indigenes of the zone and also in the diaspora. To be sure, Ibeanu and Onu have set the pace for similar projects in 58

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other zones. There is a need to examine the historical antecedents in the zones to be studied. We require an appropriate theoretical understanding of the issues at hand. Arguably, the volumes of the ethnic mapping project use an old paradigm of analysis and conceptualisation in the examinations of ethnicity. By this one means the employment of a very traditional notion of culture in which identity is tied to parametres such as land, blood, the clan and the postcolonial state. These parametres are still useful but they do not tell the entire story of contemporary Nigerian ethnicities. It is surely time to include other variables such as globalisation, virtualisation, new conceptions and mobilisations of geographic space (or what has been called itinerant territoriality) and the Nigerian diaspora. Accordingly, it can be argued that there is a theoretical lacuna that needs to be filled in these studies of ethnicity. To be sure, ethnicity in the age of contemporary globalisation and virtualisation needs to be retheorised to see how diasporic subjectivities, demographic movements and interconnections expand and redefine the notion of ethnicity (Sassen, 1998). For instance, the reality and presence of the nonResident Indian (NRI) as a global phenomenon have had quite a tremendous impact. NRIs in the United States and Europe have created new types of flows, circuits, disjunctures and interconnections with the various economic, cultural and political articulations of the global economy (Muppidi, 2004). As a result, the very identity and understanding of who is an Indian are being rethought. As it is, Nigerians are great travellers and the same creation of diverse global flows, circuits, articulations and disarticulations applies to the question of how new Nigerian identities and ethnicities are being reconstituted. These studies of ethnicity in contemporary Nigeria offer virtually no perspectives on these important developments. Also, the rise of new information and communications technologies is important to the issue of how ethnicities and identities are being rethought. Nigerians, just as other nationals of the globe, are creating virtual communities on the Internet using a multiplicity of paradigms and parametres. And by the sheer number of diasporic Nigerians living in different parts of the world, we can be sure that there are new constructions of identity, place and belonging currently being fabricated. The current wave of contemporary globalisation has made it necessary to rethink our existing conceptions of ethnicity and 59

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identity in ways that demonstrate the need for a radical modification and rewriting of the old texts relating to those concepts. Although it is important to continue the significant project of tracking the not fully charted cartographies of ethnicity in Nigeria, there should also be a concurrent analysis of contemporary global flows and how they mark the evolution of Nigerian ethnicities. In this way, an important conceptual breakthrough can be made in approaches to the study of ethnicity which would obviously have conceptual reverberations that go beyond the confines of Nigeria. In this regard, Mamadou Diouf’s essay, “The Senegalese Murid Trade Diaspora and the Making of a Vernacular Cosmopolitanism,” in many respects, hits the mark. Diouf tracks the transnational movements of Senegalese businessmen around the Western world in ways that suggest the emergence of peculiar forms of cosmopolitanism, international commerce, modes of organisation and new articulations of migrant subjectivity. Similarly, the notion of space is now crucially important to the study of ethnicity. Michel de Certeau in his theoretically intriguing book, The Practice of Everyday Life (1984), refigures the space of the city as a site for the retrieval of private autonomy within the context of increasing technologisation and panoptical surveillance. In this way, the politically, economically and culturally weak inhabitants of urban space inevitably win the power to recreate themselves and thereby create new identities in the process. Also we must recall that the very concept of what constitutes African identities remains highly problematic, as V.Y. Mudimbe suggests in his landmark book, The Invention of Africa (1988) (see also Muchie, 2003). However, it is important to bear in mind that the phenomenon of ethnicity does not only flourish in decolonising and modernising contexts. In some post-Fordist societies, ethnicity can be no less pronounced than it is in developing contexts (Sasen, 1998). Indeed it is not just in a context such as Nigeria or Africa that we have manifestations of pronounced ethnicity or the politics of belonging. The phenomenon of ethnicity spills across space and time into contexts that are supposedly premodern and also post-Fordist. In conclusion, there is the need to theorise the concept of ethnicity according to the multiplicity of diasporic flows that now constitute migrant Nigerian life. Also, the new information and communications technologies are creating virtual communities that are transforming a variety of ethnic registers and finally, the instrumentalisation of space 60

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is a necessary category in the much-needed reconceptualisations of the politics of the subject, identities and ethnicities.

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Chapter Two

Historical Dimensions of the Ogoni Crisis In the preceding chapter, a critical study of the historical conditions of ethnicity and federalism in Nigeria was undertaken since the ultimate objective of this study is to link the Ogoni crisis to some important historical and discursive contexts, in order to determine what implications it may have on the Nigerian sociopolitical experiment (as it may be termed under the present circumstances). Before we begin the actual description and analysis of the Ogoni crisis, we shall link up to yet another problematic: the discourse of “internal colonialism”. G. G. Darah, a prominent commentator on the crises in the Niger delta, asserts that “oils have been both a blessing source of troubles in the delta” (Guardian on Sunday, November 19, 1995). One cannot but agree with him (Soyinka, 2006). In the colonial era, the trade in palm oil was central to both colonised and coloniser. On both sides of the mostly irrevocably dichotomised colonial divide, great fortunes were amassed and lost, just as the politics and realities of the trade made heroes of some and villains of others (see Dike [1956], Ikime [1969] and Doortmont, [2005] for an account of similar colonial relations of trade in the Gold Coast). By virtue of the vibrant commercial activities in the area, European cities such as Lisbon, Amsterdam, Manchester and Liverpool grew to financial prominence. However, the project of the European colonial enterprise would soon turn some of it negative aspects upon the inhabitants of the region. The first victim of British colonial wrath was King William Dappa Pepple of Bonny. Pepple was deposed and sent to Fernando Po in 1854. Eventually, he was reinstated in 1861 and died five years later. On the other hand, the fall of Jaja of Opobo had international repercussions. Jaja, whose real name was Jubo Jubogha, had been a slave. He was credited with a sharp business acumen which he used for the benefit of his compatriots. Specifically, he sought to break the European monopoly in the domain of trade, which he was able to do eventually. This feat made him the preeminent traditional chief in Bonny and he was respected by both indigenes and Europeans alike. Jaja’s success aroused the envy of his rivals who went on to plan a civil war. In the end, he was forced to resettle in Andoniland in 1870. The 62

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indomitable Jaja did not cease agitating for better terms of trade from European monopolists and he was able to rally African businessmen to his cause. This provoked the wrath of the colonial authorities which had him exiled to Accra, tried and then retransferred to the West Indies; he died on the way home. The ordeal of Nana Olomu of Itsekiri is no less interesting. Nana began the trade in palm oil in 1883. In time he became perhaps the wealthiest businessman in his province. Apart from this, Nana was also a very cultivated man who charmed his foreign trade associates. Not surprisingly, his success and sophistication made him several enemies among his fellowmen. Even the British with whom he conducted business were not exempted from the bile of jealousy. So in 1894, a British punitive expedition made up of military and naval forces attacked his capital, Ebrohimi and compelled him to flee. Nana spent his remaining days in Koko. The year 1897 marks a disconcerting historical and cultural watershed in the ancient city of Benin. The British, pursuing the imperatives of their colonial project, deposed Oba Ovonranwen Nogbaisi, ruler of the Benin Empire, on the pretext that they wanted to pave the way for legitimate trade. The British invasion did not simply seek the political annihilation of the Benin Empire, but also its cultural extinction as well, as was evidenced in the manner in which priceless artistic and cultural artefacts were carted off with impunity to the art galleries of Europe. Benin and in fact the whole of the African continent is yet to recover from the rapacity of this plunder. Ovonranwen, after being dethroned and humiliated, died in exile in 1914. The British conquest in which the pillage of Benin’s works of art featured prominently instigated perhaps the first really articulate phase of anti-colonialist nationalism in those troubled parts. There was also armed resistance, for example by a warrior called Ogidigbo who raised a competent army that gave British authorities a lot to chew. He was later apprehended and died in custody after being tortured in 1902. Other motivators of the initial stages of anti-colonialist struggle and nationalism include Oshua of Ovhunghworun through whose direction the quest for self-determination assumed a wider geographical import extending in the process to incorporate Iseyin in the present Oyo State, Owerri and Aba in the Eastern region, which 63

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was also the location of the landmark Aba Women’s Revolt in 1929. Mukuro Mowoe who also vigorously agitated for selfdetermination, fairness in resource distribution, educational and health rights was a businessman with international connections in addition to being a member of the Western Regional Assembly. He died, however, in 1948 of what was suspected to have been a malarial attack. Shell, the multinational petroleum concern, found oil in the region in 1956 and then the story of the Niger Delta took on an entirely new dimension. The region which is estimated to have produced wealth worth 10 trillion naira in about forty years sunk paradoxically into a shameful condition of neglect, squalor, and environmental degradation under the combined oppression of an oligarchic military class and multinational petroleum concerns. Just as palm oil had been the decisive commercial commodity of the colonial era, crude oil seized the centre-stage as the product that would be central in determining the destinies of most the individuals in the region. It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of millions of people, indeed the whole nation has become inextricably linked to the Niger Delta region. Some would even argue that crude oil was a root cause of the Nigerian civil war. To return to the Niger Delta saga as it unfolded before the civil war: Isaac Adaka Boro in a feat of romantic and ethnonationalistic zeal led a small contingent of equally militant and idealistic Ijaws indigenes in what has been called a 12-day revolution. This event occurred in early 1966. Boro and his band of followers were able to capture almost all of Ijaw territory within two weeks. But in less than two weeks also, the federal military forces were able to suppress the uprising. Isaac Boro and a couple of his compatriots namely Samuel Owonaru and Nottingham Dick were indicted for treason and sentenced to death in June 1966. They appealed against the judgement and later, the convicted men were set free by Lt. Col. Yakubu Gowon, then military ruler of Nigeria. When the civil war broke out, a now repentant Boro acting within a pan-Nigerian frame of mind enlisted into the Nigerian army as a major. He was killed in action in 1968. Death has always been, in more ways than one, a condition of existence in the Niger Delta region. Adverse conditions such as the festering malarial swamps that sprawl from the lush creeks and the internecine character of the slave wars that decimated the population in the interiors made life particularly tough. The sweltering swamps in 64

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particular are breeding grounds for a variety of tropical diseases such as malaria and typhoid. Yet the Niger Delta maintains a strategic position as the largest mangrove forest in Africa and is the third largest of its kind on earth. Its importance is amplified by the fact that it is responsible for 80 per cent of the national GDP and 95 per cent of the federal budget. Specifically, the area is the location of highly industrialised concerns which include two petrochemical industries, three refineries, a fertiliser complex, a steel plant, major electricity generating stations, the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) project and other petroleum-related complexes. The Niger Delta region covers about 70,000 square kilometres most of which are flooded almost all year round. But perhaps what marks out the region more than anything else in contemporary times is its chronic underdevelopment, poverty, endemic violence and the profound sense of neglect that engulfs the locale. The generalised misery that governs the lives of most of its inhabitants is clearly apparent. This state of prostration can be observed from either the rural perspective or the urban one, where the cost of living is well above the national average. Furthermore, there is a lack of basic facilities such as potable water, adequate health care delivery systems, educational establishments and many other basic amenities of modern existence. G.G. Darah cites a lengthy passage from a study conducted by the Industry and Energy Operations Division of the West African Department of the World Bank: The Niger Delta has been blessed with an abundance of physical and human resources, including the majority of Nigeria’s oil and gas deposits, good agricultural land, extensive forests, excellent fisheries, as well as with a well-developed industrial base, a strong banking system, a large labour force, and a vibrant private sector. However, the region’s tremendous potential for economic growth and sustainable development remains unfulfilled and its future is threatened by deteriorating economic conditions that are not being addressed by present policies and action. (World Bank report cited by G. G. Darah in Guardian on Sunday, November 19, 1995)

Not unexpectedly, the region is a good example of the culture of waste and impunity that characterises the Nigerian nation. For instance, 76 per cent of the gas reserves which account for 78 per cent of Africa’s known reserves is flared. This ecologically disastrous 65

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situation contributes to global warming and also fosters conditions that lead to climate change (Bond, 2005a). In other words, in the Niger Delta which is the source of a rich and variegated history and ecology, we also have a picture of truncated potential wedged within the putrescence of swamps and collective aspirations for greatness caught in thick forests of despair, disease and neglect. It is this sense of despair that is intellectualised by Ben Naanen, a scholar of history at the University of Port Harcourt, in a fairly famous article entitled, “Oil-Producing Minorities and the Restructuring of Nigerian Federalism: The case of the Ogoni People”. Not surprisingly, Naanen was for a period the General-Secretary of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP). In the paper in question, Naanen introduces another dimension to the national ethnic problem; the phenomenon of “internal colonialism”. His exact words are: “In regard to oil-producing minorities, and the Ogonis in particular, an appropriate conceptual framework to help explain the situation giving rise to their present struggle is that of “internal colonialism”.” (Naanen, 1995:48) Ken Saro-Wiwa also employs the term frequently in addition to others such as “ethnic hegemonism”, an expression he uses to classify the Northern domination of the federal governmental structure. Any discussion of internal colonialism should also involve an appraisal of colonialism itself. This is because both phenomena and processes are inter-linked by a continuum of historical forces which have also become inextricably meshed within the contemporary postcolonial milieu. At this juncture, a brief discussion of the colonial logic might prove useful. It is not necessary to dwell indefinitely on the relations between coloniser and colonised other than to state the obvious regarding the ethno-racial divide between Europeans and Africans or other colonised peoples along social, economic, political and cultural lines during the height of colonialism. It was in many ways akin to a slave/master relationship. At the attainment of independence by colonised peoples a fresh dynamic of sociopolitical forces produced what is known as neocolonialism. In other words, colonialism gave way to neo-colonialism, which Ngugi wa Thiongo defines thus: Neocolonialism… means the continued economic exploitation of Africa’s total resources and of Africa’s labour power by international

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monopoly capitalism through continued creation and encouragement of subservient weak capitalistic structures, captained or overseered by a native ruling class (1981:5).

And arguably, it is this new sociopolitical phenomenon that is partly responsible for what has been called internal colonialism within African contexts. The colonial politico-administrative apparatus was adopted unimaginatively by the emergent ruling elite which strengthened its oppressive mechanisms of domination. This elite, which Frantz Fanon had warned about, turned out to be the most ardent advocate of the undiscriminating discourse of colonialism. Therein lie the discursive complexities involved in apprehending colonialism and its related manifestations. Homi K. Bhabha dwells extensively on the ambivalence inherent in the colonial situation in his forward to Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks: “the jagged testimony of the colonial dislocation, its displacement of time and person, its defilement of culture and territory, refuses the ambition of any ‘total’ theory of colonial oppression” ( 1986: x). Similarly, it is important to note that the nomos of colonialism and the nomos of the postcolonial state, much as they are marked by different orders of power and different ideological orientations, share at certain significant moments an underlying logic. This is because the fundamental violence of colonialism is sustained by a self-perpetuating logic that only a stronger counter-power can arrest and overcome in order to institute a new nomos that has managed to reconcile what in actual fact are systems of elemental polarities. In addition, the initial theorists of the colonial situation such as Balandier, Mannoni, Fanon and Rodney left out a crucial element, or more precisely an insufficiently theorised articulation of postcolonial logic in relation to the colonialist imperative of control and subjugation. This theoretical articulation, which in fairness they could not have apprehended in its current plenitude, is the phenomenon of internal colonialism. Commenting on Fanon in a manner that does justice to the other theorists of colonialism in his era, Renate Zahar observes: Fanon gives us a phenomenological description of neocolonialism which is in general correct but which is restricted to the conditions in the former colonies. It does not include any analysis of international relationships of dependence nor the background and motives of

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modern imperialist policy (1974:101).

So taken collectively, many other theorists of the colonial relation at the moment of postcolonial liberation were unable or unwilling to propose a theory that was able to transcend the post-independence euphoria of old colonial dependencies. Their work, as a result, is marked by what one would have to accept as a phenomenological reduction. Peter Ekeh on the other hand recognises the need for social scientists to interrogate the more immediate effects of the colonial situation so as to arrive at a more holistic understanding of African social structures and contemporary realities (1983:5). The nature and dimensions of colonialism are far more problematic and more engrossing than most would assume since they disfigure or metamorphose virtually almost everything they come in contact with, from the way corporate self-image is constituted to sociopolitical institutions and cultural practices (Mudimbe, 1988, 1991). Indeed, as Ekeh avers: Colonialism is important because it is more than acts of creation; it embraces social formations whose dimensions even the most imaginative actors in the colonial situation could not predict (ibid. 6).

In this way, we notice the complexities involved in apprehending colonialism and its related manifestations. Consequently, the incessant failures to understand its ever changing dynamics have more or less been the bane of the African continent (Wiredu, 1980, 1996). This is reflected in the disintegration of most of the African social and political structures and in an alarming inability of the contemporary African consciousness to reorient itself within the dynamics of Westerninspired modernity on the one hand, and the imperatives of indigenous cultural practices on the other. Different manifestations of alienation have become a major fact of existence in Africa and this doubling of the conceptual vision - colonial/postcolonial, tradition/modernity - stems from the multiple fissures of the colonial relation (Bhabha, 1994). Internal colonialism then becomes yet another manifestation of the rejection of certain crucial values, often leading to an adoption of a Hobbesian ethic for the sustenance of bare life. This constitutes a part of the fallout of the seemingly interminable logic of colonialism. 68

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Therefore Naanen says he wishes to apply “a modified version of the theory of internal colonialism” (1995:47), the history of his conceptual framework makes sense. But before we examine Naanen’s views, we might as well dwell on another aspect of colonialism. Mannoni (1964) in his study of the Malagasy colonial situation in the 1940s proffers a hypothesis that is based on the syndrome of dependence. The thrust of his argument in the book aptly titled Prospero and Caliban: The Psychology of Colonization is that since colonialism irreparably destroyed the organic mythologies and symbols that constituted the foundations of reality for the average Malagasy, s/he then necessarily has to fill the disorienting cosmological vacuum with the omnipresent and omnipotent image of the white colonial overlord who assumes a fundamental cosmological role. The white subject becomes for her/him the invested symbol around whom s/he can reconstruct her/his fractured sense of reality. Now, this syndrome of dependence is important because it invariably afflicts most colonised peoples. The question then is, does this syndrome affect oil-producing minorities like the Ogonis? Naanen’s work should provide us with at least the outlines of an answer. Otherwise, Ken Saro-Wiwa (in his works) might be more forthcoming. Certainly, the answer must be sought in the history of the Ogonis and the experiences that have informed their collective fortunes, aspirations and Weltanschauung. For in probing a people’s past as a cognitive undertaking we might discern, through its welter of its triumphs and defeats, its hidden fears and psychological constitution (no undue essentialisations intended here). The Ogonis are no exception to this- for want of a better word- rule. They are indeed proud people whose fortunes have sunk underneath the weight of immense contemporary problems. Several anthropological and ethnographic studies have been carried out regarding the ancestry of the Ogonis (Saro-Wiwa, 1992:11). A few of the myths of origin have received systematic consideration. A belief holds that the Ogonis emerged from across the Imo River. Another myth of origin maintains that they migrated from Ghana and settled in the southern part of the Niger Delta area. Furthermore, the Ogonis, who are made up of six traditional kingdoms - namely Babbe, Elem, Gokana, Nyo Khana, Ken-Khara and Tai - are said to have established themselves in the area well before the fifteenth century. The land in which they settled was endowed with 69

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considerable agricultural as well as aquatic resources and these endowments provided for the sustenance of the majority. In time, the area became a veritable food basket providing most of the agricultural requirements for the eastern Niger Delta. Land is not viewed by purely materialistic terms: to the Ogoni, the land on which they lived and the rivers which surrounded them were very important. They not only provided sustenance in abundance, they were a spiritual inheritance. The land is a god and is worshipped as such. The fruit of the land, particularly yams, are honoured in festivals and indeed, the Annual Festival of the Ogoni is held at the yam harvest. The planting season is not a mere period of agricultural activity: it is a spiritual, religious and social occasion (SaroWiwa,1992:11).

Indeed they had a distinct mythological and cosmological worldview that drew its basis from the land. This is true with so many other traditional African societies (Bundy, 1988; Eveleth and Mngxitama, 2003; Mngxitama, 2006). Consequently, any external acquisition of Ogoni lands would be regarded as an intolerable violation of their spiritual existence. Land is the property in which they fixed some sort of primordial, as well as religious, attachment. Ogoni territory is approximately 404 square miles while its population is put over 500,000 (by estimates of the mid 1990s). This makes Ogoniland one of the most densely populated areas in the whole of Africa. The forests have been depleted or altered in several places to make way for agriculture. Thus, land is very crucial to the Ogoni. Another point worth noting is that even though contact between the Europeans and the inhabitants of the Niger Delta began as far back as 1485, the actual conquest of Ogoni people by the colonial enterprise did not occur until 1914 when the Northern and Southern Protectorates of Nigeria were merged. Major Webber and Major G. H. Walker (who was in charge of a large detachment of policemen) were detailed by the British colonial authorities to effect the subjugation of Ogoniland (SaroWiwa, 1992:15). In this regard, the religious centre of K-Gwara was completely destroyed. Thereafter, the Ogonis were “administered as a part of Opobo Division within the Calabar province” (ibid.15). This meant that the administrative headquarters that catered to Ogoniland was about 200 miles away. Administering the Ogoni merely entailed 70

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“the collection of taxes and the establishment of courts for the maintenance of law and order” (ibid.16). In effect, the history of the structural alienation from the centre can be traced to this specific period. Describing the situation, Saro-Wiwa writes: “Once in a while, an Assistant District Officer would pay a visit to the area to sit over court cases, parcel out Ogoni land to their Igbo neighbours or enforce the collection of taxes” (ibid.). This state of affairs led the Ogoni women to protest at Egwanga (now Ikot Abasi) where several of them were killed in 1929. Even the British themselves were aware of the chronic inadequacies of their administrative machinery together with the problematic nature of the vast geographical entity they were seeking to administer. Sir Hugh Clifford, one of the early governors of Nigeria, called it ”a mere collection of self-contained and mutually-independent native states, separated from one another…by great distances, by differences of history and tradition and by ethnological, racial, tribal, political, social and religious barriers” (cited in Saro-Wiwa, 1992:19). Expressing the same views, Lord Hailey, the British official responsible for the African Survey, said in 1955 that Nigeria was “perhaps the most artificial of the many administrative units created in the course of European occupation of Africa” (ibid.). The passing of time would demonstrate that ethnic minorities would be continually displaced by the granulating impact of the federal arithmetic and the logics of regionalisation as formulated by colonialism and the postcolonial commandement. It was perhaps these historical antecedents which ensured that few Ogonis had any contact with the external world prior to 1935. We had noted that the Nigerian civil war had a distinct ethnonationalistic origin and coloration as prosecuted by the Biafran enclave. What we must also understand is that Ogoni attitudes towards the Biafran-led secession were more or less similar to that of the Bette and other marginalised ethnic groups. Saro-Wiwa writes dismissively of Emeka Ojukwu: “the leader whose masturbatory egoism, intransigence and political illiteracy was to wreak so much horror on the peoples of Eastern Nigeria” (ibid. 27). His derison is slightly more restrained when he says: Ojukwu had a hidden agenda to the war. He wanted to control the oil of the Ogoni and other delta minorities. He calculated that if the resources of these people were in the hands of his new kingdom, the latter would be extremely well off (ibid.).

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Matters were made worse by the attitude of the federal military government which was not different from Biafra’s. When actual war broke out, the Ogonis became pawns for the formidable opposing forces. They suffered all kinds of privations that ranged from manipulative psychological schemes to starvation and forced migrations. The Biafrans forced them out of their lands and relocated them in the hinterlands of the East without making adequate provisions for their welfare. Once there, after in most cases having lost their possessions to extortion, they had to seek degrading menial jobs which invariably did little to improve their material conditions. On the psychological front, they had to endure the humiliating taunts that they were sell-outs to the federal side. Many were detained in makeshift concentration camps where only a few were fortunate enough to escape. Those that could not escape were eventually set free by the federal troops. But this freedom was merely tokenist because the federal victory was only an opportunity to further reinforce the inequities of the entire federal structure, which meant greater marginalisation for the oil-producing minorities as well as the increased centralisation of governmental power. In all, about 30,000 Ogoni indigenes are said to have died as a result of the civil war. This number accounts for about 10 percent of the population at the time, leading Saro-Wiwa to conclude that “the Ogoni live in a nation which is determined to exterminate them and that Ogoni lives mean nothing whatsoever to Nigeria, and… the murderous country would be pleased to see Ogoni territory rid of all is inhabitants so that its oil resources can fall into Nigerian hands” (ibid. 43). A cursory look at a few events after the civil war may serve to enhance the impression of internal colonialism. When the MurtalaObasanjo administration seized power from General Yakubu Gowon in 1975, it soon set about changing the revenue allocation formula which had remained more or less constant since independence. At independence, the federal government and the regions shared revenue accruing from mining rents and royalties on an equal basis. The Murtala-Obasanjo regime made the revenue allocation ratio 20 per cent for state governments and 70 per cent for the federal seat. Petroleum had become established as the largest source of the national income (Naanen, 1995:56-57). Shehu Shagari, the first Nigerian executive president, further slashed the revenue allocation ratio due to the states 72

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to 2 per cent. This is in spite of the fact, as Naanen points out, that the governor of Rivers State, which produces a sizeable portion of revenue accruing from petroleum, was from his political party, the National Party of Nigeria (NPN). The disgraced ex-Nigerian dictator, General Ibrahim Babangida increased the figure to 3 per cent, an increase that at all events could not have meant very much. It is this situation, no doubt, that led to the mobilised and vociferous Ogoni opposition as well as other oil-producing minorities to the contradictory nature of Nigerian federalism. In this regard, Naanen concludes: Perhaps the greatest proponents of radical restructuring in the oilproducing areas are the Ogoni people in the present Rivers. Frustrated by what they call decades of neglect and exploitation by the Nigerian state and “environmental terrorism” by the oil companies, the Ogoni have decided to pursue more radically than any other group what they perceive as their rights and the case for restructuring (ibid.62).

This structural alienation ought to be viewed in conjunction with the internal colonialism of which Naanen speaks, and it is helpful to recognise that it (internal colonialism) “began in Nigeria, not through economic domination (it was precisely the lack of it), but through penetration deriving from a skillful pursuit of control, aided crucially by numerical preponderance” (ibid.49). The point, though not enormously important, is well taken. Political advantage was secured through the explicit support of the colonial administration (a repeat of the Belgian colonial policies in Rwanda) and handed over to “the conservative pro-British Northern political class, which inherited the mantle of power from the colonialists at independence” (R.T. Suberu, 1996: 19). Decades of ignoring the question of addressing minorities from the pre-independence period to the present undoubtedly flawed the federal structure in addition to undermining the moral basis of the nation, when viewed in relation to the processes of democratisation carried out by successive Nigerian governments. Also examined from this angle, the allegation that internal colonialism exists gets a considerable boost. We can now revisit Mannoni’s thesis on the matter of the dependency syndrome. By all accounts, land played a very crucial role to the Ogonis both materially and more importantly spiritually. Similarly, the Ogonis did not maintain the sort of relationship the 73

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Malagasy people maintained with the colonialists. To begin with, they were never really integrated into the colonial system by virtue of their extremely pronounced minority status within the Eastern region. The ethnoregional equation effectively excluded them from the integrative sphere of affairs. In the East, they faced the same trauma of emotional, cultural and political alienation. Indeed, they were greeted with scorn by other major ethnic groups: “pio pio” which meant “idiot” was a popular invective. Successive federal military governments too did nothing to alleviate this entrenched sense of alienation. It was during this period that they began to disbelieve any illusions of nationhood the country presented to them. Consequently, they came to believe that it was only through a struggle against this externally foisted carapace of alienation that they could redefine their collective worth as a people. For them, this struggle also meant the creation of a distinct political identity and as well as an opportunity for cultural rejuvenation. Indeed, social activism and political mobilisation are not altogether new to the Ogonis and this brief historical excursus would be incomplete if mention were not made of a certain figure who has assumed a somewhat mythological importance to the vast majority of the indigenes of Ogoniland. This figure is Paul Birabi. Paul Birabi is reputed to be the first Ogoni graduate, having studied at the legendary Achimota College, Ghana and then obtained a degree in mathematics from Southampton University in the United Kingdom, after which he became a teacher at Dennis Memorial Grammar School in Onitsha and then vice-principal of the Okrika Grammar School. He soon turned to politics and won a seat in the Eastern Nigeria House of Assembly after which he was selected to serve in the House of Representatives in Lagos. In 1953 he attended the Nigerian Constitutional Conference in London and died shortly after his return. What is particularly noteworthy is that Paul Birabi is credited with the creation of an Ogoni political identity. This he did through the Central Ogoni Union (COU) which he helped found. The COU placed the award of scholarships and the building of educational institutions among its top-most priorities. Birabi vigorously sought to integrate the Ogoni people within the larger sphere of national politics. Of him Saro-Wiwa writes: He was much beloved of the Ogoni people and they lost many years of political and social development through his death. His absence

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created a vacuum which was not filled for a long time (1995:25).

After his death, Birabi’s wife, Victoria Maah, and their chidren became more or less the wards of the Ogoni Divisional Union of which Saro-Wiwa was secretary. Through diligent communal efforts and the activities of Saro-Wiwa when he was Commissioner for Education in Rivers State, one of Birabi’s sons, Dr. Bennet Birabi, received formal education and has since come to be a prominent Ogoni man. Dr. Birabi was also a minority leader in the Senate. However, his position did little to improve the Ogoni situation. This situation would soon erupt into a political inferno of national as well as international dimensions that continues to indicate signs of persisting if the grievances within the Niger Delta remain unaddressed. In carrying out this study which was initiated in January 1996, many aspects of the bleak Ogoni situation were revealed in spite of the highly garrisoned territory at the time. The militarisation of the territory was total. Indeed it was difficult to move about freely and conveniently without encountering one of the numerous military roadblocks and motorised armed units that had besieged Ogoni territory. As such, personal security became exceedingly precarious. There were several buildings that had either been partially destroyed or completely razed to the ground. Many other buildings were pockmarked by gunshots. Fear and mistrust became widespread among the indigenes of Ogoniland. Indeed fear had crippled most people. Quite frankly it would be Herculean to remain undaunted by the relentless brutalisation that was being carried out in Ogoniland. As a result, the collective mobilisation the Ogoni had struggled so hard to achieve was severely threatened. The gains of the Saro-Wiwa-led years of struggle had been somewhat eroded by the ideological schism that had been grafted into the fabric of Ogoni unity by those opposed to the struggle and tenets of the protest movement. In order to reverse this trend, it would certainly have been necessary for exiled members of the Movement of the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) to return to fashion strategies in furtherance of the struggle for economic rights and selfdetermination in a manner that was generally acceptable to the Nigerian polity. This, definitely, was the greatest challenge that faced MOSOP and other similar movements in the Niger Delta; otherwise the work of several years would have been meaningless. 75

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The intense militarisation of Ogoniland notwithstanding, tours were taken of the Gokan Local Government Area villages of B. Dere, K. Dere, Kpor, Mogbo, Lewe, Bomu, Kibangha, New-ol, Bera, Boghor, Barako and Yeghe. In Khana Local Government Area; Bori, Boue, Kaani, and Nwiyaa were visited. Within Eleme Kingdom, Agbonnchia, Ogale, Eteo, Ebubu, Aleto and Alese were visited. And finally, in Tai Kingdom, Khani, Bunu, Nonwa, Kebara, Koroma, Horo, Kira, Borobara, Kpite, Botem, Kira, Borobara, Korokoro, Ueken, Cham, Sime and Nonwa-Uedume were toured. The tensions within Ogoniland during that period affected all spheres of existence, most of all, economic activities like agriculture, commerce and fishing. The gulag mentality that held the area in thrall can be said to have contributed immensely to a widespread feeling of insecurity. During that period, Ogoni needed its exiled leaders such as Atina Hart, Barry Kumbe, Noble Nwibari, Goodluck Diigbo and Owens Wiwa, the younger brother of Saro-Wiwa to direct the next line of action. A powerful minority complex continued to afflict the Ogoni people and undermine their sense of dignity. This complex, as we seen, had been left to develop unchecked for many decades and from the national perspective, the level of its containment would indicate how prepared the country is to imbibe the democratic ethos. In addition, Ogoniland continues to suffer the same sort of plight that plagues a large portion of the Niger Delta. Unemployment is high, poverty widespread and the basic amenities of modern existence are few and far between. As such, chronic discontent is also common. Yet this is not supposed to be so because of the abundant natural resources with which the territory is blessed. Therefore as G.G. Darah contends, oil has become the curse of the communities that are unfortunate to possess it. Rather than bring material wealth, those very valuable natural resources have become the source of insecurity and squalor. In other words, oil wealth equals the Dutch curse (Shelley, 2005).When one goes through Ogoni territory, the extent of squalor and underdevelopment that is evident everywhere is simply overwhelming. Old people look on with bitterness and defeat and the youth have very few sources of hope. As a result of the crises plaguing the oil-producing communities in the Niger Delta, quite a number of other protest movements have emerged. The Ijaw ethnic group established the Movement for the Survival of the Izon Ethnic Nationality (MOSIEND) and publicly 76

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presented the Izon Peoples Charter in 1992; Ogbia indigenes which make up a community of forty-five villages also got mobilised and united to combat the damage done by oil spillages, climate change and environmental degradation; the Chikoko Movement which draws its members from twenty-eight ethnicities and from at least five states came into existence in 1997 as an environmental pressure group; In December 1998, the Ijaw Youth Council formally accepted the Kaiama Declaration and decried the continuing demonisation of their protest by both government and the multinational petroleum concerns. As such, protests and discontent continue to be rife in the Niger Delta.

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Chapter Three

The Birth of a Social Movement

On November 10, 1995 at about 11.30 a.m., Kenule Beeson SaroWiwa, prolific author, minority rights activist, environmentalist and president of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) was hanged alongside eight other Ogoni indigenes after being found guilty by the Ogoni Civil Disturbances (special) Tribunal presided over by Justice Ibrahim Auta. The eight other Ogoni indigenes who were hanged were Barinen Kiobel, John Kpunien, Baribo Bera, Saturday Dobue, Felix Nwante, Monday Eawo, Daniel Gbakoo and Paul Levura. Needless to say the entire Nigerian nation all but stood still from the shocking reverberations of what were called “judicial murders” in several quarters. The manner of death that befell Saro-Wiwa and the eight other Ogoni indigenes spoke volumes about the nation’s human rights record and also about the political miasma that dominated the sphere of governance during the height of military dictatorship. The fact that the trial of the Ogoni activists attracted enormous international attention did nothing to alter the outcome of the trial. It was also a trial in which the defence lawyers had to withdraw and in which no appeal was granted. And yet Nigeria was a party to international human rights treaties as well as international agreements on fair trial and the death penalty promulgated by the United Nations of which Nigeria was a member. Among them were the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights; and UN Safeguards Guaranteeing Protection of the Rights of Those Facing the Death Penalty. The grotesqueness of Saro-Wiwa’s death equals a similar tragic incident in Africa’s often disconcerting political history. In October 1990 in Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, a journalist was asked to witness what turned out to be probably the most horrific sight he had ever seen (Davidson, 1993:243). It was the video recording of the killing of Samuel Doe, the dictator who virtually enslaved Liberia for about nine years. Doe had been stripped to his underpants. As he cried and pleaded, his tormentors chopped of his ears. He had also been shot on his legs and crouched soaked in his own blood. Eventually he died 78

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from the numerous kinds of torture he had been made to endure, captured within the lens of a video camera for the benefit of posterity. On the day Saro-Wiwa died, present were the Military Administrator of River State, Lt. Colonel Dauda Musa Komo, Justice Ibrahim Auta, chairman of the trials, the State Attorney-General, a number of State Commissioners, the Commissioner of Police and his assistant. Present also were the General Manager of the State Radio Corporation and the ubiquitous video cameraman. Saro-Wiwa asked that his wallet and much-beloved pipe be handed over to his father or a relative but his request was turned down. Like a common criminal, he was handed over to the hangman who succeeded with the grisly execution only after five attempts. After the death sentence had been passed on him, Saro-Wiwa had said with the pungency for which he had become famous, “Today is a black day for the black man. It goes to show that even the best of the black man is a criminal” (Tempo, November 23, 1995). That judgement transcended the myopia of that moment of atrophy. Acid was poured on the bodies of the hanged men, to destroy them faster. Journalists working for Sunray Publications, a media house in Port Harcourt were barred from reporting the upsetting proceedings. As a final measure to blot out the tragedy from memory and alter its historical value, the government compelled prominent local chiefs, traditional rulers and local government chairmen to affix their signatures to a document supporting the executions. Mourning processions and the wearing of black clothes were also banned in Ogoniland, a directive that might have lifted straight from the legal texts of apartheid. All of this was the culmination of the bitter struggle the Ogoni people led by Ken Saro-Wiwa had waged to secure economic rights, political significance, cultural reaffirmation and ecological rehabilitation. The struggle had been a very trying one as we shall see in due course. When the Bomu (Dere) oil disaster occurred in July 1970, it signalled the beginning of worse things to come. The Bomu II blowout, as it came to be called, was the result of Shell-BP oil mining activities. It continued day and night for about two months and the people living in the area were forbidden during the period of the disaster to make fire which meant they could neither prepare their meals nor smoke. The Bomu II blow-out kept emitting crude oil, sand, 79

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water, gas and fire which not only destroyed farmlands in the area but also left within a radius of three miles a heavy veneer of crude oil (Oamen Enaholo cited by Saro-Wiwa, 1992:72). Fishing and agriculture were consequently adversely affected. Shell-BP offered to assess the ecological catastrophe with a view to paying some reparations to the immediate victims of the ecological disaster. The Ogoni people on their part asked for “adequate compensations” to rehabilitate their lands but Shell-BP representatives rejected their demands. However, it would be recalled that the British Government directed that the oil companies and ship owners pay £3 million as compensation during the Torrey Canyon disaster of 1966 which happened off the coast of England. Thus, the Bomu II blow-out began an unpleasant relationship between Shell and the Ogoni people. No compensation was granted the Ogonis as required in other parts of the world. Yet their social existence, physical and psychological well-being had been severely affected and jeopardised. Furthermore, no relief materials or services were rendered to the victims as was the norm under more civilised conditions. The victims, in effect, were simply left to swim or sink within the miseries they had no hand in engendering. It was this kind of dehumanisation that fired the zeal of Ken SaroWiwa, the man who came to personify the Ogoni struggle itself, perhaps more than even the legendary Paul Birabi. When he was only about twenty-seven years old, Saro-Wiwa published a pamphlet entitled The Ogoni Nationality Today and Tomorrow in 1968. Saro-Wiwa agreed later that the political tract was essentially the exuberant philosophical reflections of a young man, but nonetheless it possessed the seeds and incipient activism of what would become in time the full articulation of the Ogoni struggle. On a Darkling Plain, on the other hand, is a much more mature exposition of the genesis of the crisis that would shake the federation to its very roots. When Saro-Wiwa pledged himself to “the improvement of the life of the Ogoni people and, by implication, the ethnic minorities and indigenous people of Nigeria” (Saro-Wiwa, 1995:49), he knew the road would be arduous but obviously not as fatal as it turned out. Initially, self-determination had not been uppermost in his mind. After all, during the civil war, he had served as a member of the Interim Advisory Council of the newly created Rivers State. He was Administrator for Bonny, “the important export oil terminal in the Niger River Delta adjoining Ogoni territory” (ibid. p.51). He was also 80

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appointed a Commissioner in the Rivers State Cabinet during the final quarter of 1968. Much later, he would accept to serve as an Executive Director of the Directorate of Social Mobilisation under the regime of General Babangida whom he would later call “the conman and dictator of Nigeria” (ibid. p.42) in 1987. According to Saro-Wiwa, the later part of the 1970s was like a revelation for him: In 1977, after I failed, surprisingly, to get into the constituent assembly, I analysed why all my hopes for the Ogoni had failed to materialize. And I found that the task was gargantuan one which would require an almost superhuman effort. My failure up to 1973 I could ascribe to my relative youth and inexperience. My failure in 1977 I could put down to my not having organized the Ogoni people property. But also I knew that any such organization would require a lot of energy, patience, and money. The first I had, the second I could cultivate; the last I lacked absolutely. It seemed proper to look for the last. I spent the next six years doing just that (ibid. pp. 55-56).

After he was removed from the Rivers State Cabinet in 1973, he tried his hands at running a grocery store and at “wholesale trading in locally manufactured and imported goods” (ibid.). He also developed an interest in acquiring landed property which he thought was crucial for the generation and investment of wealth. Saro-Wiwa, since his university days at Ibadan, had always had a strong inclination for literary and scholarly pursuits, so around 1983, he committed himself to writing and publishing. Within the next decade he had published about thirty books some of which won him prizes such as the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) Prize for Drama in 1990 for a collection of plays entitled Four Farcical Plays. Two other books authored by him were shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa. Thus, within a short period, he secured a noteworthy international literary reputation for himself, having served as an energetic president of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) just before the Ogoni struggle assumed its fullest dimensions. William Boyd, the prominent British novelist who wrote a moving introduction to Saro-Wiwa’s moving A Month and A Day (a chronicle of his life and Ogoni crisis), also became a committed friend. The federal military government, ignorant as it was about the 81

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edifying attributes of culture, simply perpetrated the blunder such philistinism draws in its wake. It was not cognisant of the reality that an author who had attained a visible international standing was no longer an individual limited by the constrictions of nationality, readership and geographical barriers. He becomes, so to speak, a citizen of the world (according to Anthony Kwame Appiah’s [2002] description). It was with this knowledge and confidence that SaroWiwa pursued his interests ranging from minority rights activism, economic rights and cultural renewal to ecological enlightenment and political consciousness based on a contemporary understanding of globality which the moribund Nigerian political establishment did nothing to accommodate or even address. Soon enough, this same political and cultural degeneracy and myopia within Nigerian officialdom would drive Wole Soyinka, Africa’s first Nobel Laureate for literature, into exile along with other notable pro-democracy activists (African intellectuals, as we know, are usually expected to intervene in times of crisis [Mama, 2006]).Those who were not fortunate to take flight into exile were clamped into detention by means of extra-judicial procedures. Among this latter group were journalists who were carrying out their lawful functions. Saro-Wiwa’s cultural engagements or more specifically literary activities became pivotal in the formative stages of the Ogoni struggle. For instance, in his speech at the launch of On a Darkling Plain, he had said: The ethnic nature of Nigerian society is a real one. It cannot be prayed or wished away and those who try to do, in public, only have to turn to the example of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Romania to disabuse their minds (Saro-Wiwa, 1995:63).

In the same speech he had also asserted: “The present structure reinforces, indigenous colonialism - a crude, harsh, unscientific and illogical system” (ibid.). However, the real turning point in the struggle was when the Ogoni people accepted a Bill of Rights that had been drafted on their behalf by Saro-Wiwa on August 26, 1990. The bill was presented to the ruling Nigerian President, General Ibrahim Babangida and his Armed Forces Ruling Council and reads thus: (1) That the Ogoni people, before the advent of British colonialism,

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were not conquered or colonized by any ethnic group in present-day Nigeria. (2) That British colonization forced us into the administrative division of Opobo from 1908 to 1949. (3) That we protested against this forced union until the Ogoni Native Authority was created in 1947 and placed under the then Rivers Province. (4) That in 1951 we were forcibly included in the Eastern Region of Nigeria, where we suffered utter neglect. (5) That we protested against the neglect by voting against the party in power in the region in 1957, and against the forced union by testimony, before the Willink Commission of Inquiry into Minority Fears in 1958. (6) That this protest led to the inclusion of our nationality in Rivers State in 1967, which state consists of several ethnic nationalities with differing cultures, languages and aspirations. (7) That oil was struck and produced in commercial quantities on our land in 1958 at K. Dere (Bomu oilfield). (8) That oil has been mined on our land since 1958 to this day from the following oilfields: (i) Bomu (ii) Bodo West (iii) Tai (iv) Korokoro (v) Yoria (vi) Lubara Greek and (vii) Afam by Shell Petroleum Development Company (Nigeria) Limited. (9) That in over 30 years of oil mining, the Ogoni nationality has provided the Nigerian nation with a total revenue estimated at over forty billion naira, thirty billion dollars. (10) That in return for the above contribution the Ogoni people have received NOTHING. (11)That today, the Ogoni people have: (i)No representation whatsoever in ALL institutions of the Federal Government of Nigeria; (ii)No pipe-borne water; (iii)No electricity; (iv)No job opportunities for the citizens in Federal, State, public sector or private sector companies; (v) No social or economic project of the Federal Government. (12) That the Ogoni languages of Gokana and Khana are undeveloped and are about to disappear, whereas other Nigerian languages are being forced on us. (13) That the ethnic politics of successive federal and state governments are gradually pushing the Ogoni people to slavery and possible extinction. (14) That the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria does not employ Ogoni people at a meaningful or any level at all, in defiance of the Federal Government’s regulations.

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(15) That the search for oil has caused severe land and food shortages in Ogoni, one of the most densely populated areas of Africa (average 1,500 per square mile; national average 300 per square mile). (16) That neglectful environmental pollution law and sub-standard inspection techniques of the Federal authorities have led to the complete degradation of the Ogoni environment, turning our homeland into an ecological disaster. (17) That the Ogoni people lack education, health and other social facilities. (18) That it is intolerable that one of the richest areas of Nigeria should wallow in abject poverty and destitution. (19) That successive Federal administrations have trampled on every minority right enshrined in the Nigerian constitution to the detriment of the Ogoni and have, by administrative restructuring and other noxious acts transferred Ogoni wealth exclusively to other parts of the republic. (20) That the Ogoni people wish to manage their own affairs. Now therefore, while reaffirming our wish to remain a part of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, we make demand upon the Republic as follows: That the Ogoni people be granted political autonomy to participate in the affairs of the republic as a distinct and separate unit by whatever name called, provided that this autonomy guarantees the following: (a) political control of Ogoni affairs by Ogoni people; (b) the right to the control and use of a fair proportion of Ogoni economic resources for Ogoni development; (c) adequate and direct representation as a right in all Nigerian national institutions; (d) the use and development of Ogoni languages in Ogoni territory; (e) the full development of Ogoni culture; (f) the right to religious freedom; (g) the right to protect the Ogoni environment and ecology from further degradation.

This bill of rights marked the beginning of the existence of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni people (MOSOP) as a concrete social movement. Initially, Saro-Wiwa was not a formal official of the association, he was merely the “spokesman”. Dr. Garrick Leton was its first President and L.L. Lah-Loolo was chosen as Vice-President. A lawyer, Mr. Saankaa was made the Secretary while Titus Nwieke was appointed as Treasurer. Saro-Wiwa, who was deeply engaged in his literary pursuits, saw the necessity of widening the scope of his 84

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ecological concerns and so he formed the Ethnic Minority Rights Organisation of Africa (EMIROAF). Nonetheless, an incident that indicated that the sort of endeavours Saro-Wiwa was involved in would cause a lot of trouble in the future occurred around that same period. Some youths from an oil-producing community in Rivers State went out protesting against the “ecological terrorism” of Shell in their area. Military forces promptly moved in and at the end of the repressive operation 80 people were killed and almost 500 houses were destroyed. Before he became the President of MOSOP, Saro-Wiwa had started to make moves to internationalise the Ogoni struggle. The international community itself had also started to take interest in the happenings in Ogoniland. A documentary film entitled The Heat of the Moment made by two British film-makers, Glen Ellis and Kay Bishop, which featured Saro-Wiwa, was aired on Channel 4 in Britain in October 1992. Part of the internationalisation of conflict involved meeting with a nongovernmental organisation called the Association of Threatened Peoples based in Germany. But the turning point of this process of internationalisation was to a large extent Saro-Wiwa’s association with the Hague-based Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation (UNPO) which had been established by a young Dutch lawyer, Michael van Walt van der Praag in 1991. The UNPO had 48 members that represented well over 100 million persons and it was primarily “an organization of nations and peoples that are not adequately represented in international fora, such as the United Nations” (UNPO Report, 1995:5). Through the efforts of enlightenment and awareness campaigns of Walt van der Praag, Saro-Wiwa got to know a considerable deal about the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations which he was privileged to address in the summer of 1992. As an organisation, MOSOP accomplished a major landmark in terms of collective unity and organisational impetus in January 1993. In order to do so, more than 400,000 Ogoni indigenes staged a non-violent protest to register their disapproval of the disagreeable federal structure in addition to the deleterious effects of the oil exploration activities of Shell which had led to severe ecological hazards. MOSOP had truly come of age on account of the organisational zeal and competence that went into the planning of the historic event, as well as the impressive strategies of crowd control that ensured that not a 85

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single major violent incident was recorded. The success of the event further enhanced the international fortunes of MOSOP as the Ogoni people were admitted into the fold of UNPO which also elected SaroWiwa as Vice-Chairman of the assembly. Apart from the Nigerian press which gave ample coverage to the Ogoni march, CNN, the American global television corporation also covered the proceedings. Time, the international news magazine, too was not left out. In order to consolidate upon the gains of the march, the One Naira Survival Fund (ONOSUF) was launched. In a speech prepared for the launch, SaroWiwa enunciated the credo of the Ogoni protest movement: MOSOP has an underlying social philosophy: ERECTISM, an acronym for Ethnic Autonomy, Resource and Environmental control. We believe that under this umbrella, there will not only be selfreliance, democracy, social justice, healthy competition and progress, but that the Nigerian confederation which it proposes can be widened to embrace other African peoples in unity, peace and prosperity based on hard work (Saro-Wiwa,1995:149).

In spite of these achievements, Saro-Wiwa’s unfortunate ordeal in the hands of the Nigerian security forces commenced. He had recalled: From that moment onwards, I was in real trouble with Babangida’s bloodhounds. When the Federal Government sent a team to Port Harcourt ostensibly to dialogue with people from the oil-producing areas, I was not allowed to speak on behalf of the Ogoni people (ibid.153).

Nonetheless, he was able to have a discussion with Philip Asiodu who was then the Minister of Petroleum Resources. Asiodu was known for his rather unsympathetic attitude towards oil-producing communities even though he came from the Niger Delta region. More specifically, he had said in a lecture delivered to Nigerian public servants in 1980: Given, however, the small size and population of the oil-producing areas, it is not cynical to observe that even if the resentments of the oil-producing states continue, they cannot threaten the stability of the country nor affect its continued economic development (CLO Annual Report, 1993:327).

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At this point, the federal security services intensified their drive to extinguish the Ogoni protest movement. In particular, Saro-Wiwa became a constant target for state persecution. For example, in 1993 alone, he was taken to jail four times and Ogoni territory became a site for massive militarisation. Nonetheless, the introduction of repressive procedures by the state came after the groundwork for the mobilisation of the Ogoni people had been laid. Apart from MOSOP which was the central organisation, there were also the National Youth Council of the Ogoni People (NYCOP), the Federation of Ogoni Women’s Association (FOWA), the Ogoni Teachers Union, the National Union of Ogoni Students (NUOS), the Conference of Ogoni Traditional Rulers (COTRA), the Council of Ogoni Churches (COC), the Ogoni Students’ Union (for young students), and the Ogoni Central Union (OCU). All these community-based bodies and social movements which were strongly supported by Saro-Wiwa obviously broadened the scope of enlightenment and political involvement towards the struggle within Ogoni society as a whole. It may be useful to note that NYCOP which was headed by a journalist, Goodluck Diigbo, was perceived to be the most vigorous of these community-based associations. But as it would be understood in due course, mere vigour alone could not secure the declared Ogoni objectives. Indeed the Ogoni people would be made to undergo several baptisms of fire. One of such trials occurred in April 1993 when Wilbros, an American Company working on contract for Shell started to destroy crops near Biara in Ogoniland with the protection of Nigerian soldiers. Their mission was to dualise the Trans-Niger pipeline which distributes oil from the Niger Delta via Ogoniland and then to the export terminal at Bonny. Furthermore, they had neither sought the agreement of the landowners whose crops they were destroying nor had conducted an environmental impact assessment study (SaroWiwa, 1995:15; UNPO Report, 1995:22-23). Karalole Korgbara, mother of five and landowner whose crops had been ruined, protested to the soldiers on guard and she was beaten up by them. The following morning, after she had reported the incident to her co-villagers, thousands of virtually unarmed Ogoni indigenes wearing twigs and palm fronds visited the site only to be greeted by gunfire. In the end, Korgbara had to have her arm amputated owing to the bullet wounds she had sustained. A man was killed and more than twenty people were injured. These untoward incidents led eventually to the 87

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withdrawal of the pipeline contractor firm, Wilbros. Shell officially withdraw all their staff from Ogoniland in January 1993, after a worker had allegedly been beaten (UNPO Report,1995:12). The violence assumed a rather different dimension shortly afterwards. This time, it took the form of intra-ethnic disturbances. When some Ogoni people were returning from Cameroon by boat along the Andoni River, they were attacked with automatic weapons in July 1993. This unprovoked attack left between 60 to 100 people dead (ibid. 24). The assailants revealed that they were Andoni and dared the Ogoni people to retaliate. The Andoni are neighbours of the Ogonis who live on the immediate south. Offended by the brazen effrontery, the Ogonis reported the murders to the authorities which more or less ignored them. In August of the same year, a more elaborate Andoni-led attack was launched upon the Ogoni town of Kaa. Those who survived the ordeal reported that highly sophisticated weapons such as grenades, mortars and dynamite had been employed. Apart from the 124 Ogoni indigenes who were killed in the attack, hundreds of houses including schools and the main market were demolished (ibid.). Human rights organisations such as the Civil Liberties Organisation and Amnesty International corroborated the fact that heavy artillery had been used and judging by the substantial evidence available, there had been a definite military connection in the comparatively sophisticated operation. According to MOSOP estimates, more than 1,000 Ogoni indigenes were murdered in the massacre in addition to over 20,000 people who became displaced as a result. There was clearly no cogent reason for the massacre as both communities had agreed, but even more distressing was the outcome of the governmental inquiry into the disconcerting event. Indeed, the peace initiatives made by the state government to re-establish good neighbourliness between the Ogonis and Andonis had also been merely perfunctory. So duplicitous were the initiatives that the late Claude Ake, the government appointed mediator and an Ogoni representative in the negotiations, refused to sign the accord. Ake’s reasons were that: Reports on the conflicts have noted the scale and systematic nature of the destruction as well as the sophistication of the operations. These features raise questions about whether the conflict is merely communal and also the possibility that the two communities might have been victims of some other forces exploiting a local situation

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(Ake cited in the UNPO Report, 1995:25).

As if to confirm the suspicious circumstances surrounding the attacks directed at the Ogonis, more attacks were launched upon those among them who resided with Okrika communities along the waterfronts of Port Harcourt. These armed assaults on Ogoni communities which happened in December 1993 followed a similar pattern to the Andoni attacks. In this regard, the causes of the disturbances, both immediate and remote, were indeterminate. Second, the weapons used were equally sophisticated. The only difference this time was that a commission of inquiry set up by the government to investigate the incident, led by Major Paul Taiwo, discovered that the houses that were destroyed belonged to the Ogonis who had been taken unawares. It also noted that the operation had been conducted with a measure of military professionalism (UNPO Report, 1995:25-26). This martial efficiency resulted in the destruction of five Ogoni settlements, 95 people were killed and more were wounded in addition to hundreds of Ogoni indigenes who were rendered homeless. Again in April 1994, another conflict occurred this time with the Ndoki who are the northern neighbours of the Ogonis. Initially, it was only a minor skirmish until the military moved in and engaged itself in the destruction of lives and property within Ogoni territory. The villages affected included the Tai villages of Oloko 1 and 11, Boobe, Gbaken, Nwemkova and some other settlements (ibid.27). Shortly before then, within MOSOP, a degree of factionalisation had taken place. As the Babangida-masterminded presidential elections of 1993 approached and with the de-proscription of old politicians, Edward Kobani and Dr. Garrick Leton opted out for the field of wider electoral politics, thereby leaving vacant the MOSOP positions of Vice-President and President respectively. Kobani sought the post of Chairman of the Rivers State branch of the Social Democratic Party and lost to a less experienced man (Saro-Wiwa, 1995:173). As for Leton (disillusioned by the outcome of the Ogoni crisis, he later became a recluse and died in 1998), Saro-Wiwa alleged that he became a delegate to the National Convention of the Social Democratic Party without informing his fellow activists in MOSOP (ibid.). Both Kobani and Leton supported Ogoni participation in the presidential elections but Saro-Wiwa was averse to it. To resolve the matter, it was put to a vote and those against Ogoni participation in the 89

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elections won by an eleven to six margin. Ken Saro-Wiwa became in the end the President of MOSOP while Ledum Mitee, a Port Harcourt based lawyer, became Vice-President. Unsurprisingly, when SaroWiwa assumed full leadership, the tempo of MOSOP’s activities increased dramatically, so much so that the movement would attain not only its apotheosis but also perhaps its breaking-point. Essentially, what changed the fortunes and the entire dynamics of the Ogoni protest movement was the murder of four moderate Ogoni leaders: Albert Badey, a former Secretary to the Rivers State Government; Edward Kobani, a former Commissioner for Education in the State, S.M. Orage, a former Commissioner for Health in the State, and T. B. Orage, a community leader and brother of S.N. Orage. The murders which were perpetrated by a group of youths occurred on May 21, 1994. At the risk of belabouring the point, after this, nothing would be the same again. But even before the killings of the four Ogoni leaders, deep schisms had begun to upset the foundations of Ogoni unity both at the leadership and grassroots levels. Ironically, Edward Kobani, one of the murdered people, had characterised some Ogoni leaders who “were deliberately using the government and its coercive instruments against the MOSOP, its leaders and the Ogoni people” as “vultures” (Saro-Wiwa, 1995:161), a pejorative term intended for those who betray the Ogoni cause that would come to assume widespread currency. On the day the four Ogoni leaders were murdered, Saro-Wiwa had intended to hold rallies giving reasons why he intended to seek election as an Ogoni representative to the Constitutional Conference after he had campaigned vigorously against Ogoni participation in the presidential elections. Goodluck Diigbo, the NYCOP President, was with him at the time. But even more importantly, Saro-Wiwa was accompanied by a contingent of military guards led by Stephen Hassan of the Police Mobile Force and Navy Lieutenant P.C. Nwatu. The military convoy had to turn back after they were between 100 and 150 metres away from where the leaders who were to be murdered were holding a rally of which Saro-Wiwa had no prior knowledge. Afterwards, when he heard the news of the deaths by telephone from the Government House, he had exclaimed, “Oh my God, I am just hearing that from you, that is bad, I have always stood against violence, all those responsible for this should be brought to book” (Press release by Ledum Mitee, May 26, 1994). It should also be noted 90

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that the UNPO of which Saro-Wiwa was Vice-President denounces the use of violence in struggles concerning minority rights. Similarly, the Ethnic Minority Rights Organisation of Africa (EMIROAF) of which he was both founder and President, and which had renowned public figures such as General T.Y. Danjuma (rtd.), Professor J.I. Elaigwu, Professor Theo Vincent and Fred Agbeyegbe, a lawyer and author as trustees, “called for thorough investigation into the killings urging that the law should be allowed to take its full course and those concerned treated according to the rule of law” (EMIROAF press release, May 26, 1994). Furthermore, it condemned the killings “as barbaric and unnecessary”. Ken Saro-Wiwa and Ledum Mitee, the Vice-President of MOSOP, were arrested a day after the murders. A note written and smuggled out of detention by Ledum Miee gives a graphic account of some of their ordeals. When the security operatives visited his home to arrest him, Mitee was away and so, instead, three of his relatives were apprehended. They were later released after he turned himself in and was then transferred to a cell in the Bori Military Camp. There, he spent the first night sleeping on the bare floor with 22 other inmates. Saro-Wiwa, on the other hand, had been put in leg chains. He was tortured and left in acute pain. Both of them were allowed neither sleeping mats nor medical attention. They were also prevented from taking their baths. Several other people were arrested in connection with the murder of the Ogoni four. They included Emmah Pii, Innocent Dimkpa, Michael Nyodee, Peter N. Nkpea, Dumle Kpeateh, Innocent Tonwee, Chinyere Jacob, Tombari Simeon, Nathan Neebani, Samuel Sigha, Adam Kaan, Dr. Barinen Kiobel, Telema Inifie, Scotland Botu and Sunday Daniel. In carrying out the crack-down on MOSOP activists, the police services were left out. In effect, the military usurped the functions of the law enforcement agents and this lapse was decried by MOSOP leadership. In all, more than 30 MOSOP sympathisers stood trial along with Saro-Wiwa (UNPO Report, 1995:30). Indeed, the scope of the crack-down had been very wide. In May, 1994, while searching for Saro-Wiwa, armed soldiers had invaded the premises of Sunray Newspapers, Port Harcourt, and arrested the News Editor, Ifeatu Agby, The Editor of Weekly Sunray, Jereoma Thomas, and finally a driver with the company, Emmanuel Nka. They were all tortured on account of the Ogoni crisis, for which MOSOP had to tender an official 91

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letter of commiseration. In November, a three-member special tribunal was established with Justice Ibrahim Auta as its head. Ledum Mitee escaped death by the skin of his teeth and the rest, as they say, is history. Ken SaroWiwa, who had crystallised the inchoate strains of Ogoni ethnonationalism into one mobilised and energetic social movement, together with eight others received the hangman’s noose. In carrying out this study, numerous interviews with Ogoni indigenes on both sides of the ideological divide were undertaken. Both MOSOP activists and so-called “vultures” were interviewed. Not surprisingly, the acute militarisation of Ogoniland and the attendant repressive measures had left an indelible scar on their collective psyche. And since a powerful gulag atmosphere prevailed, fear was also very widespread. However, once they were convinced of their relative safety, many Ogoni indigenes were ready to talk, especially those who had pro-MOSOP sympathies. The “vultures”, on the other hand, tended to be generally evasive, often answering questions that had not been posed thereby disallowing meaningful progress. All in all, the following interviews were conducted during the first half of 1996. Testimony from Ogoni People Nna S. Joseph: a school teacher and Koroma town chapter of MOSOP: MOSOP is still very powerful. The armed forces came here to drive us out. They were here on the 4th of January 1996. We celebrated the Ogoni Day here and some of us went to Bori, our headquarters. I went to Bori myself and there were a lot of gunshots. The security forces did not allow us to celebrate. About five people died on the spot and ten others were seriously injured and they are still on the critical lists. Police patrols were rampant and those who put on mourning clothes (black on black) were molested. The vultures don’t really have any name they call themselves, they are anti-MOSOP and are government sponsored agents who aim at destabilising the activities of MOSOP. There are no serious plans to organise violence, we are a nonviolent organisation as it is reflected in our Bill of Rights. All we do is to promote the aims and objectives of MOSOP peacefully. I think we will always survive and our spirit is there to “say no to genocide”.

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(Joseph had on a badge that read “The Spirit of Ogoni says No to Genocide” and also an identity card that had a picture of Ken SaroWiwa 1941-1995). If Ken could be killed unjustifiably what chances do the rest of us have? Soldiers are everywhere destabilising the activities of MOSOP. MOSOP members are unduly harassed and oppressed, we are in a dilemma, really, we are now suffering very well. David Ndoneken from Korokoro-Tai: My son who is a member of MOSOP was driven out of my village. I had a very large compound which was bulldozed by his Royal Highness Chief G.N.K. Gininwa in conjunction with the military. If you are a member of MOSOP you must be suppressed. My son was arrested two months ago on the orders of the Royal Highness and they say he has just been released and now stays in Port Harcourt as the authorities say but I am not sure. MOSOP was welcomed in Korokoro and Bunu. But now to stay in Korokoro as a member of MOSOP is almost impossible, you just have to shut your mouth. Felix Saro-Mamah, a technician: MOSOP is even stronger than it was before because we found out that Ken’s cause was actually genuine and that was why the government killed him. We still have Ledum Mitee to lead us to the last Ogoni man. During Ogoni Day, he came out to lead. If the government could kill Ken then who are the rest of us? Let them kill us all but we want the international community to be aware. We are aware of the presence saboteurs and they are many but we still have to possess courage. Ogonis are marginalised within the Rivers State Civil Service and we are aware that even some of our so-called leaders sell our people to make their millions. However, our old folks are waiting for what the international community can do to alleviate the Ogoni problem. There is nothing good the Federal Government can do except for the vultures. What happened in South Africa is repeating itself here. You can be here and they can bundle all of us to the camp where they will lash us twenty strokes of the cane every morning until you can bail yourself with three or four thousand naira. A Traditional Ogoni ruler who preferred anonymity: The Ogoni problem was introduced by our late father, Ken SaroWiwa in the year 1990. He told us that we were being cheated by the Federal Government. He gave us the knowledge that the oil wells in Ogoniland could have developed the place more than this. We listened to him as our leader and it was on that note that he formed

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MOSOP. MOSOP has been very effective, it was not there to overthrow the Nigerian Government but to enlighen the Ogoni people. The enlightenment was done through the holding of rallies. The Chiefs were invited to hear what MOSOP had to say. They recognised alliances with the State and Federal Governments. But other Chiefs are full-time members of the organisation. Plans are being made to see that the MOSOP idea does not die, we seek to communicate the Ogoni cause by the presence of January 4 as a cardinal day on our calendar. Over fifty people were detained since January 4 including Paul Adams a Canadian Journalist. We need more states in Rivers State as no other state has been created from it beginning in its inception in 1967 (after the death of Ken Saro-Wiwa, Bayelsa State was created out of the old Rivers State). David Piagbo from Korokoro: I was driven out by the anti-MOSOP elements. As far as I’m an Ogoni man, I’m a member of MOSOP. I was driven out of my village on August 22, 1995. In fact I was in Port Harcourt when my wife ran to me and told me that my house had been set on fire. I participate in MOSOP meetings regularly and that was why they burnt my house, twenty rooms altogether including my motorcycle and generator. After they had finished looting my house, they set it on fire. The vultures are very strong at the moment because they use the army and if you don’t run, they will kill you. Even the Royal Highness (the traditional ruler of Korokoro) is a vulture and he invites the army as the leader of the vultures. Nanne Barisua from Bunu-Tai: I don’t think the crisis has been resolved… I don’t think the military has been doing what it should to resolve the crisis. The genesis of the crisis we have today started when MOSOP became divided. Those that broke away from MOSOP sought military protection and as such the military is anti-MOSOP. The military has inflicted an injury on MOSOP because it is about struggle and so the military is trying to put an end to the struggle. It is aggravating the problem of the Ogonis and it is destroying them, the military together with Shell. Gokan John from Bere, a school teacher and a founding member of MOSOP: People are seeking refuge in the bushes at Bere, especially the youth because of activities of the armed forces who extort money from men and women, young and old.

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MOSOP has very strong opposition because the government had divided us and so you find some people working for it. Nobody comes out in the open for fear of being arrested. A lorry load of MOSOP activists was arrested on January 5 and were taken to Port Harcourt on January 9. MOSOP is struggling to ensure that the arrested activists are released and that the incessant arrests cease. Bernard Aganeh from Botem, a member of MOSOP: The Ogoni Day held as usual. By my estimation, 80 per cent of the Ogonis are sympathetic with MOSOP. The National Youth Council of the Ogoni People (NYCOP), the youth wing is branded as militant by the Nigerian government. Some people who were against MOSOP used NYCOP for their own selfish ends. So there are intra-communal clashes. The majority of the Ogoni people do not think Ken was justly punished and or killed. The Andoni, the Ibos and Okrika are happy that Ken is dead. But the Ikweres, the Ijaws and the Ahodas are in support of our struggle even though no ethnic group has a movement in the magnitude of MOSOP. MOSOP is very strong. We have not been instructed to go militant and we are told to be active through enlightenment. There are several places where the military presence is very strong such as Kria, Kpor, Kpite, Gban, Bori, Eleme/Tai Local Government Area and Khana where they camp day and night. If there is any slight misunderstanding in a village some people invite them and then they come to steal, loot and rape. During the trial of Ken, they arrested about fifty clergymen for fasting and holding prayers for him. The military kept interrupting church sessions. Those who are antiMOSOP invite the soldiers into Ogoniland to harass MOSOP members. MOSOP is not just a primitive organisation; there are leaders in almost all the villages. We hope to actualise our aims by liaising with the international community and demonstrating to the government non-violently. Ben Naanen, Johnson Nna, Ledum Mitee and Court Nwiado are all in the forefront of the MOSOP struggle but during the trial so many of the MOSOP leaders were sent into exile. Johnson Nna, a political analyst and official of the Public Complaints Commission in Port Harcourt: MOSOP was an idea which transcended class barriers. There was no distinction between one person and another in MOSOP and it was very committed. People see MOSOP as a fight against injustice and past wrongs. Everybody in Ogoniland was a member of it, motorpark touts, fishermen and pastors. It became an ideology, a religion. It became a mass movement in which there was no control.

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Ken was a charismatic leader who people saw as a lord and saviour. There were cadres in MOSOP through which the idea was disseminated. Even hooligans who didn’t really know what it was about became members of MOSOP. MOSOP was not a monolithic idea but Ken was a unifying force. The Nigerian State is a dependent capitalist state and not an autonomous one. It survives only on rent and taxes from multinational companies. In this regard, there is an alliance between the state and these foreign companies. This has been the case since colonial times. Because the colonial state was too powerful and centralised, it gave concessions to foreign multinational companies to pay taxes to the government. Once there is an attack on these oil companies it is necessarily an attack on the Federal Government because it is through these companies that the government survives. Those who control the state therefore act in the interest of the alliance and not in the interest of the people and for the alliance to work well, it has agents. The government has locals who survive on it through patronage, contracts, appointments and kickbacks and so they form a grand alliance. As an idea, MOSOP challenged the alliance of these factors, the economic survival of these forces. OMPADEC is just a diversionary measure, it is still for the vultures to survive. It is not relevant to the development of the rural areas. The more repressive the government is, the more revenue it extracts from the multinational companies. Military officers, state commissioners and their wives get contracts from Shell. So there are people who can only advise government on the basis of how they stand to gain even more. The government deliberately creates tensions among various ethnic groups so as to increase the security votes which are not accounted for. The Ogoni people have been victims of a grand conspiracy between foreign capital (Shell) and their local collaborators. When MOSOP came into existence, it addressed three main issues: political marginalisation, environment degradation and economic exploitation. There was no plan to secede from the Nigerian state. Nigeria is a federation of ethnic groups which have different strengths. Under a true federal system each group must be coordinate and equal with the rest. Each group must have equal access to opportunities. But this is not the case in Nigeria. The major ethnic groups use the minorities as objects of exploitation and the Ogoni people have fallen victims to this. The Ogoni man cannot compete equally with the Hausas or Yorubas or Ibos because there is a disadvantage in numbers and access to political power. The question is, should the Ogonis continue to be slaves in the

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country? The Ogonis have no political power. An Ogoni man cannot even be a governor of the state, talkless of President of the nation. In a true federal system, the government should give the Ogoni man a chance to compete effectively in the nation. In the United States of America, there is the affirmative action to enable blacks and other disadvantaged minorities gain access to opportunities. In Nigeria, we had the quota system but it only benefited the majorities. We ask that the Ogonis should benefit from the quota system. We are law abiding citizens and do not plan to secede. Every Ogoni man has felt humiliated one way or the other, even those who are close to the government. The Ogoni man has been able to demystify the gun. Our rivers are polluted and our farmlands destroyed. There is virtually no electricity or portable drinking water in all Ogoni villages. Even Eleme, the industrial capital of the nation has no water. Sunday Amikpo, a commercial motorcyclist from Bunu-Tai: We are dying in this place, the soldiers go about everywhere beating and shooting anyone who gets in their way.

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Chapter Four

The Politics of Militarism and the Transitions of Terror This chapter discusses the issue of Nigerian militarism as it affects various facets of Nigerian sociopolitical life. Militarism, it argues, is a processual mode of governance that extends well after the end of military rule. In other words, democratic dispensations that emerge in the wake of military rule also contain seeds of militarism. The chapter explores the implications of this view by tracing the constitutional status of the Nigerian military and the mode of politics it was able to establish as well as it effects on broad aspects of Nigerian political culture. In so doing, I examine the question of militarism and prodemocracy struggles, the militarisation of Ogoniland during the height of the social struggle, the discourse on truth and reconciliation instigated by the end of military rule and finally, the connections between the post-military dispensation and actual militarism. A Structure of Militarism Several myths have been created and perpetrated by the Nigerian intellectual class regarding the Nigerian military establishment. More than the myths by the military itself, the myths created by the opinion moulders of civil society have an added veneer of legitimacy, accuracy and perhaps also, respectability. True, the Nigerian military establishment is not entirely innocent regarding civil society’s perception of it. Indeed it played an ingenious role in the general construction, popularisation and ultimately, the entrenchment of its own image. Before we attempt an understanding of this widely accepted image, it is necessary to revisit the constitutional status of the Nigerian military establishment, in the course of which we shall discern how its traditional functions have been usurped by non-constitutional motivations and interests. The Nigerian Armed Forces were established by the Armed Act of 1960, which was also the year in which the Royal Navy Act was promulgated (see also, Luckham, 1971). The Air Force Act on the other hand came into effect in 1964. The Nigerian constitutions of 1960, 1963, 1979 and 1999 all have legal provisions regarding the Nigerian 98

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military. These provisions include the following: The Federation shall: establish, equip and maintain an Army, a Navy an Air Force and such other branches of the Armed Forces of the Federation as may be considered adequate and effective; for the purpose of: (a) Defending Nigeria from external aggression. (b) Maintaining its territorial integrity and securing its borders from violation on land, sea and air. (c) Suppressing insurrection and acting in aid of civil authorities to restore order when called upon to do so. (d) Performing such other functions as may be prescribed by an Act of the National Assembly.

We must however note, at this juncture, that the Nigerian constitution does not provide for the Nigerian military to participate in the political field. Of course, this has not prevented it from assigning to itself purely political functions. But what is even more interesting is the various instruments, procedures and interests it has been able to amass and employ in legitimising its functional and ideological interests (no matter how inchoate). Obviously there are theoretical explanations for this which I shall attempt to furnish later. O.B.C Nwolise, a notable scholar of Nigerian militarism, identifies several extra-constitutional functions the Nigerian military has assigned to itself. Some of these functions include what he terms security and defence inputs, political inputs, alternative political leadership, socio-economic inputs (settlement of soldier-civilian disputes), social service, economic opportunities, projects construction, image-making (psychological) inputs, sports and games and finally international peace keeping. These are the major functions he ascribes to the Nigerian military, several of which lack constitutional backing. Nwolise’s classifications also reveal a distinct ideological bias. He argues, for instance, that “the military is equipped to do things the civilian politicians have most assuredly failed to do because of the military’s training, skill, hierarchical structure, dedication to national integration and service” (1988: 53). This kind of intellectualisation of the military myth has helped in perpetuating the military’s arrogance and excesses (see Ihonvbere, 1992). Its so-called hierarchical structure has produced paradoxical effects. While it is supposed to be an institution structured 99

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by rigid discipline, the realities, compromises and flexibility inherent in the political terrain have evidently had a corrupting influence, such that the military institution has not been able to adequately address. Military dictators such as General Ibrahim Babangida exploited the contradictory and paradoxical strains in Nigeria’s military/civil relations to the detriment of both the Nigerian military and civil society. Perhaps one of the greatest challenges for the development of the democratic ethos in Nigeria is a critical analysis of the contradictory strains in military/civil relations, and how they affect the national consciousness and political behaviour. Indeed a framework for analysis needs to be constructed because militarism is a historicopolitical process that extends beyond itself, it is in fact akin to a dialectical mode of sociopolitical dynamics that coerces, persuades and conquers until even civil society begins to employ its dictates, procedures, features and arguments in legitimising itself. Thus the commencement of a democratic dispensation after the end of prolonged militarism does not necessarily imply a definite conceptual and epistemological fissure. This is a fact of which the Nigerian civil populace must constantly remind itself. To begin with, military culture in Nigeria has had several years to develop. As it developed and refined the instruments for its perpetuation, civil society was also co-opted in the effort until the language of non-militaristic discourse not only became abbreviated and corrupted by the discourse of militarism but became indistinguishable from it. There is the need to rebuild and strengthen the language of non-militaristic discourse. In other words, there is the need to rebuild the discourse of the civil ethos. Of course this is a task easier said than done. One of the ways in which we can understand how militarism structures the political discourse of civil society in Nigeria is to determine how its ideological and intellectual proponents operate. We have noted how Nwolise provides conceptual justification for the military ethos. Jibril Ibrahim, another respected Nigerian scholar, identifies other Nigerian academics that were co-opted by the military establishment for elaborate ideological purposes. But just as militarism had its fervent ideological proponents, it also had its avid detractors within the wide spectrum of the Nigerian civil populace and also within the military itself. Until very recently, in the 100

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major debate regarding the incursion of the military into the field of politics, on one side some scholars have argued that the military institution cannot carry out any meaningful or fundamental change in society. This school holds that the only avenue for sociopolitical change is through revolutions and that the military being a conservative force often allies itself with the ruling class to abort revolutionary initiatives. On the other side are scholars who believe that the military can stimulate real development, given the special qualities in military organisations (Nwolise, 1985: 52-53). But this debate, instead of developing the language of nonmilitaristic discourse for the purpose of developing an alternative and viable mode of governance and social relations, went on to impoverish the very language of civil rights. It has been noted that “militarism is antithetical to democracy”. Also, that “the contradiction between military rule and democracy is not only ideological but also philosophical” (A. Momoh and S. Adejumobi, 1999: 220). But what does this demonstrate about the actual continuities and transformations between the two separate discourses? What genealogies have the Nigerian civil community evolved to critique its own militaristic influence? Earlier on, I mentioned the fact that democracy within the Nigerian sociopolitical context is often continuous with militarism. There are several theoretical explanations for this argument. J.B. Thompson, writing in the introduction to Pierre Bourdieu’s Language and Symbolic Power, demonstrates the nature of the social character of language and the “complicated ways in which linguistic practices and products are caught up in, and moulded by, the forms of power and inequality which are pervasive features of societies as they actually exists” (Thompson, 1991:1-2). Thompson stresses the aspect of Bourdieu’s work that elaborates upon more productive methods of viewing the operations and the social and political conditions of language. His observes that: The recognition of the right to speak, and the associated forms of power and authority which are implicit in all communicative situations, are generally ignored by the linguist, who treats the linguistic exchange as an intellectual operation consisting of the encoding and decoding of grammatically well- formed message (Ibid. 8).

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What concerns us at this juncture is Bourdieu’s preoccupation with the social and political operations of language. Perhaps this insight is not wholly original since it bears a close resemblance to Foucault’s discourse of power. These discursive insights can also be profitably applied to the Nigerian sociopolitical context. What are the operations of power in relation to the production of social discourse and reason? How do we discern its precise origins and its effects and what methodologies have we evolved in critiquing them? How do we ascertain the precise force of the discourse of power in a supposedly liberal democratic context? Indeed these are important questions. As mentioned earlier, General Ibrahim Babangida, the former Nigerian dictator, devised a wide array of political stratagems to camouflage his genuine political intentions. Those intentions turned out to be insincere and self-serving (in relation to the numerous promises he made to the Nigerian populace). But elaborate discourses were constructed to conceal them. In order to grant force and credibility to these strategies, Babangida employed the services of several skilful political scientists who were quite adept in the act of prevarication. Instead of admitting the failure of Babangida’s transition-to-civil rule programme, Olagunju (1993), one of his advisers prevaricates: “…if mistakes were made - and indeed there were some - such mistakes were not about intention and values; rather they were outcomes of social procedures, personal judgement and institutional capabilities” (“Foreword” to Crisis of Democratisation in Nigeria: Selected Speeches of IBB).

Oyovbaire, another political adviser, is even more elaborate in his justifications of the Babangida regime and its numerous deceptions. Babangida’s “programme and courses of actions were woven around the liberalisation of the economy” (1993:10). Oyovbaire proceeds to describe Babangida’s general programme of action thus: Having laid the major policies and programmes of his administration by 1988/89, the regime proceeded on a massive investment to provide the institutional and normative support for the realization of the objectives of the programmes. Quite a huge amount of resources in funds, materials and human commitment were heavily invested in the programmes of democratisation and liberalisation. These included

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such areas as grassroots development; the restructuring of market forces and the privatisation and commercialisation of appropriate government parastatals; the basic institutions of the political process for transforming the human behaviour; organization of political groupings into political parties; conducting elections; the knowledge and management of human statistics which included the population census; other basic social infrastructure in health, education, sports, the media and culture. There was also investment for the rapid development of the Federal Capital Territory and the expanded federalization of the political system by way of creating more states and local governments. There were many more other areas of resource investments undertaken by the regime for democratization of the political system and liberalization of the economy (ibid.11).

This lengthy excerpt displays the discursive intent of the official version regarding the Babangida myth by a skilful political scientist. Babangida was concerned with history and assigned his political advisers the task of constructing the official version of the discourse pertaining to his regime. But equally astute political scientists have contested the carefully constructed discourse regarding Babangida’s regime. The Babangida regime sought not to historicise truth, instead it sought to dress it in a prettified garb and hide it behind a mask of benevolence. And as we have noted it enlisted the skills of its own carefully selected scholars to legitimise its own version of truth and discourse. Academics such as Oyovbaire maintain that the military has contributed immensely to the democratisation process. But it has also been argued that “there are in-built mechanisms in military culture that makes its democratization processes truncated, less enduring and prone to failure” (A. Momoh and S. Adejumobi,1999:4). Furthermore, in relation to the Babangida regime’s self-created discourse, there is also a specific and direct counter-discourse. Jibril Ibrahim (1997:62) for instance argues: Under the Babangida and Abacha administrations, what used to be known as corruption has become the art of government itself. There is a complete prebendalization of state power and virtually all acts by public expenditure or public goods of any kind leads to the appropriation of state finances or property by officials. The routine operations of government are being subjected to prebendal rules. It is widely known, for example, that officials of state governments and

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parastatals have to pay, as they put it, “up front” a percentage of their statutory allocations to the Presidency, Ministry of Finance and Central Bank officials before their allocations are released. They, in turn, simply take their own personal shares “up front” from so called government coffers. Contractors who used to bribe officials for government contracts have been completely sidelined. The President, military governors, ministers etc. simply allocate contracts to their own front companies, and they don’t even have to pretend they are doing the job because nobody can dare pose questions.

Matters got even worse during the Abacha regime. The discourse of deception which the Babangida regime painstakingly administered to the bewildered Nigerian nation was deemed unnecessary by the succeeding administration. Discourse and strategies of prevarication were not construed as a mark of civility but as a sign of governmental weakness. The language of force gained momentum under the Abacha regime and its effects are still evident even within the context of a democratic dispensation. Abacha did not make elaborate plans to construct and propagate an elaborate official history around himself and his regime in the way Babangida attempted. Babangida’s official history of his regime, even though very problematic, carries some appeal in some Nigerian political circles. His support for Obasanjo’s candidacy for president in 1999 makes common perceptions of his democratic credentials even more problematic. He had annulled the 1993 June 12 presidential elections but had partially redeemed his image by his actions which led to the beginning of the fourth democratic dispensation. In this way, a clearly reactionary profile is counterposed with a revolutionary one, thereby contesting the popular versions of recent Nigerian history that show Babangida in a bad light. In addition, the institutional legacies left by Babangida and Abacha contain a self-perpetuating logic, that is, a rhetoric of performativity that is not easily disavowed by the rhetoric of liberal democracy. The point at which the rhetoric of militarism, in other words, the totalitarian ethos meets the rhetoric of democracy creates a mild form of institutional neurosis. Institutional neuroses of this kind are even more glaring in political contexts such as South Africa which has to battle with the awesome institutional legacies of apartheid. Apartheid as a constitutional and political reality is no more but the task of dismantling many of its institutional legacies that were inherited by the post-apartheid dispensation is a task that, in some ways, remains to be 104

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completed. In essence, the implicit rhetoric of institutions, whether totalitarian or benevolent in nature, pervades the entire social structure and in turn shapes the infrastructure of consciousness of the larger society. Militarism and apartheid as political totalitarianisms are not just ideological realities, they constitute a way of thinking and a mode of existence that are supported by a multiplicity of political, cultural, social and economic forms of capital which are quite capable of mutating according to different political circumstances. In other words, these totalitarianisms are capable of considerable resilience even under adverse conditions. The language of the present Nigerian constitution did not really evolve out of the furnace of real democratic political contestation but under the weight of prolonged militarism. Thus the language of militarism, which is also the language of force, in very significant ways, enjoys a privileged status over the language of civil rights and the civilian ethos. The discourse of force in the Foucauldian sense continues to assume an epistemic dominance over the democratic temper - be it in its neo-liberal or leftist pretexts. There is a poverty of analytical methodologies by which the relationships between the history of militarism and democratic practice within the Nigerian context are investigated. The apparent end of militarism or the beginning of a democratisation process does not necessarily signify a discontinuous epistemological rupture. The seeds of militarism are contained in, dispersed and maintained by the democratisation process despite all appearances to the contrary. The question, at this juncture, is, what are the readiness and capabilities of civil society to create its own autonomous discourse for the survival of the emergent dispensation of Nigerian democracy? As repeatedly stressed, militarism extends into the current democratic structure. What are the objectives of the surviving strains of this militarism within the democratic dispensation? Addressing these questions will provide the conceptual tools by which we understand and strengthen the on-going political culture. In other words, the discourse of the civil ethos must begin with an independent critique of its own status, and then focus on the numerous strains of residual militarism within the Nigerian polity. Perhaps another productive approach for addressing the problem is the possibility of viewing militarism as continuous with democratic culture in states that are undergoing political transformation. This 105

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would enable us to move beyond a familiar discursive binarism that poses the not altogether helpful military/civilian dichotomy. It would also enable us to overcome the complacency such binarism enforces. We simply have to continue to remind ourselves that there is no mode of speech (within the Nigerian political context), no language that is not already tainted by the event of militarism. The lessons to be drawn from challenges of coping with the strains of residual militarism extend beyond the Nigerian nation. Similarly, the demise of the apartheid regime in South Africa cannot be construed as clean political and epistemological fissure. Apartheid, apart from being an elaborate system of sociopolitical organisation that legitimated racial segregation, also thoroughly pervaded the entire South African social structures and institutions. Moreover, it is embedded in the general infrastructure of consciousness. As such, it has elaborate mechanisms of concealment and dispersal by which it can reconfigure its logic and violence even long after its ostensible demise. The Nigerian experience is certainly a worthy invitation for a more stringent critique of the aftermath of apartheid and similar forms of discredited political arrangements. Of Transitions and Dissent Wole Soyinka made a serious and disconcerting allegation about General Sani Abacha, possibly Nigeria’s worst ever dictator, on Radio Kudirat, a pirate radio station during the height of his dictatorship. General Sani Abacha was called a “clone” of Ibrahim Babangida, the former dictator from whose heinous misrule the beleaguered Nigerian nation is, arguably, yet to recover. Soyinka’s claim at the time, was taken seriously because of some compelling historical antecedents and a number of what appeared to be carefully orchestrated coincidences the Abacha regime had engineered. Abacha’s elaborate stratagems did not seem entirely new to the skeptical when not apathetic Nigerian populace. The magic-realist grotesqueness that had once characterised the political landscapes of the banana republics of Latin America some time ago was now being replicated in the nation-states of Africa with what appeared to be a brutally exact historical determinism. As a result, different conflicts of attrition began to permanently disfigure the political history of the entire continent as the tortured landscapes of Liberia, Angola, Mozambique, Sierra Leone and Rwanda attested. 106

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It is important to evoke the figure of General Sani Abacha to remind ourselves just how close Nigeria was to disintegration and also just how persistent this threat is as the present democratic culture continues to evolve. Abacha reminds us of the flexibilities of the banality of evil as a political concept, of the terror ordinary mortals can think up, encourage and condone. It is also important to note that his spirit reigns more powerfully in those that were most directly affected by his terror and also in the very institutions that were employed in the project of democratic consolidation. Abacha died mysteriously in 1998 by a stroke of luck and not through the thrust and surge of civil society. Nigeria did not quite reach that violent point of no return but the state of affairs within the nation evinced spiralling hopelessness, chronic insecurity and different layers of division within the polity. Since the annulment of the June 12 presidential elections of 1993, there has been the widespread feeling that just about anything can be “annulled” including the country. Various separatist agendas continue to emerge within the current political dispensation. The question, at this juncture, is, who is prepared to do the annulling? Who would promulgate the ever threatening decree that looms in the hidden and obviously disturbed recesses of the national psyche? Once the step is taken to actualise this persistent fear, then, an interrupted but steady cycle of violence would have been completed in all its ramifications: political, psychological and even possibly, genocidal. It is this incomplete cycle of violence that produces up to this moment, what is surely a false sense of nationhood. The crises in the Niger Delta, the vehement debates over resource control are in part manifestations of aborted collective violence and also the crippling thirst to consummate it. What is clear is that the despair and sense of terror Sani Abacha left in his wake cannot be dispelled by the ephemerality of a democratic culture that is still in its infancy. If Sani Abacha was indeed a more tyrannical clone of Ibrahim Babangida as history has proved, a few factors may be singled out for this view. For one, he was the de facto number two in Babangida’s structure of hierarchy and played a prominent role in entrenching and prolonging the regime. Second, in his heyday, he was the longest serving officer in the Nigerian army, so he had been party to many coups which ensured his hold on power. With virtually no officer courageous enough to challenge him, he held the Nigerian nation in 107

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thrall for the period he remained in power. At this juncture, it is necessary to affirm that Abacha was no mere replica of Babangida as Soyinka claimed. He was clearly a more inhumane and a more brutal dictator. During the confusing era of the transition to democracy, Nigerian officialdom weaved a great deal of elaborate and digressive rhetoric around the more gullible strata of the Nigerian populace and also the international community. In many instances, this corrupting verbiage deluded many Nigerians and derailed quite a number of genuine initiatives on the part of civil society geared towards the consolidation of the processes of democratisation (Obadare, 2005). It was sometimes difficult (until the final days of his reign) to perceive the Abacha regime for precisely what it was; an inhuman authoritarian junta that was bent on the discredited and anachronistic quest of hanging on to power for its own sake. Ibrahim Babangida, Abacha’s erstwhile master understood better international opinion concerning issues such as democracy, human rights and freedom of the press, so he attempted to play a double game. He had to maintain power through typical dictatorial means repression and patronage - but he also tried to present a front of benevolence and sincerity to the international community. No other Nigerian leader has displayed such a disconcerting Janus-like personality (especially at the beginning of his reign). Through Babangida, many alien and corrupt political practices have gained widespread currency. This is not to claim that Nigeria lost its political innocence with the emergence of Babangida. Indeed it is doubtful if it had any political innocence in the first instance. Nonetheless, Babangida destroyed the legitimacy of the military, and so it could no longer claim to be committed to correcting the ills of society. Militarism itself became, after him, a Janus-like entity; a cancerous evil with capabilities for brutal social (dis)order but it was also a political evil that the Nigerian populace seemed to tolerate and even accept. Babangida achieved initially a seductive blend of brute power and a latent democratic ethos which had a compelling appeal for many Nigerians. His nemesis, which is something of a paradox, was the annulment of the June 12 presidential elections which proved too costly for him and more importantly the nation. June 12 remains a problematic watershed for the sociopolitical evolution of the nation. Short-sighted political opportunists have sought to reduce the 108

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significance of this landmark event. However, it is such a morally loaded event that even the strategy of ignoring it does not diminish it. Any politician at some point needs to confront the intractable moral impasse created by June 12. Chris Ngige’s ordeal- with holding onto his political mandate after being kidnapped and assaulted on the orders of his political godfather, Chris Uba- in Anambra State as the governor which began in 2003 bears some correlation with June 12. Ignoring its magnitude is akin to removing the ground beneath one’s own feet. The simple reason is this; until the issue of June 12 is addressed, every aspirant for political office necessarily is a potential victim of that double-edged militaristic weapon, political annulment. All efforts of political activity face the possibility of annulment until the initial catastrophe is revisited and the annulling agency put permanently in check. This unfortunately, is a challenge the Nigerian political class has not convincingly overcome. Chris Ngige’s political fortunes - which have mafia-like dimensions of political corruption are inextricably linked to the event of June 12. Undoubtedly, the origins of ridiculing the political class began with the wily Ibrahim Babangida. In the bid to prolong his reign, he created an unnecessarily bloated bureaucracy, an incompetent class of political opportunists and hangers-on and an astonishing variety of illintentioned government agencies to oil his machinery of dictatorship. The Babangida regime established the Political Bureau in January 1986, which was given the mandate of collating the opinions of Nigerians on the political future of the country and which made appropriate recommendations against the background of the 1979 experience of democratic transition. The consensus of those within the Political Bureau was that the military should disengage from governance in Nigeria by 1990. However, the Babangida administration adopted the choice of 1992 which was unpopular and which betrayed its true political intentions. Even the choice of 1992 was eventually changed to August 1993 after a protracted and monumental struggle in which both the military and the political class were affected and which ended in the June 12 crisis. The truth is, Babangida had no intention of relinquishing power. No cost was spared to realise his ambitions for a continuous hold on power. Apart from employing a daunting array of political analysts and scholars of public policy such as Ojetunji Aboyade (once chair of the Presidential Advisory Committee) and Adele Jinadu (former director-general of the Administrative Staff 109

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College of Nigeria), General Babangida also established the Centre for Democratic Studies (CDS) and the National Council for Intergovernmental Relations (NCIR). The CDS, once helmed by Omo Omoruyi, a professor of political science, was entrusted inter alia with “conducting research into anti-democratic behaviours and proferring solutions to them.” The NCIR which had another professor of political science, Isawa Elaigwu, as its director-general was charged with conducting studies on federalism in a multi-ethnic state like Nigeria. In one swoop, during the first quarter of 1996, the Abacha administration abolished both research bodies, thereby creating a bureaucratic vacuum. Analysts are of the view that these dissolutions were not motivated by any well-advised attempt at restructuring the nation’s sagging bureaucracy but by a bid to flush out perceived political opponents and also to abolish the structures established by General Babangida whether or not they were effective. To support this allegation, Maryam Babangida’s Better Life for Rural Women Programme (another exercise in profligate public spending) was dissolved to make way for the Abacha regime supported Family Support Programme through which millions of naira from the national coffers was spent. The lack of consistency of Nigerian governments is well known. Under these circumstances, wanton travesties of governance were committed. For example, when politicians were granted permission to form political parties, all of them were in the end found unsuitable after so much time, energy and of course money had been spent. Politicians were later forced to join two government established parties - the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the National Republican Convention (NRC) - which ultimately did not lead to democratic rule. This particular fiasco of the transition to civil rule programme is estimated to have cost the nation about fifty billion naira. We have noted the well known Nigerian penchant for enormous bureaucracies. Accordingly, the Abacha regime established the Transition Implementation Committee (TIC), the State Creation, Local Government and Boundary Adjustment Panel, the National Reconciliation Committee, the Federal Character Commission and the National Electoral Commission of Nigeria (NECON). During their existence, these various agencies mainly engaged in petty squabbling among themselves. In a way, they appeared to have been established to put ambitious political cronies in check. Another disconcerting feature of the Nigerian political scene is the 110

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inability to evolve concrete ideological alternatives and to promote new and credible political figures. From the First Republic to the emergent Fourth Republic, Nigerian politics has been characterised by the same jaded ideological tropes and dominated by the same political actors who seem to hold on to the destiny of the nation like a vice-like grip. When Babangida claimed that he was going to create “a new breed” of politicians one ought to have known better. For his own part, Abacha did not set himself this futile objective. His strategy at the moment of his emergence was to win over a restless and volatile political class that was still reeling from the seismic dissensions created by the June 12 crisis. Many of the main political figures of the Third Republic (though not necessarily created during this period) such as Lateef Jakande, Adamu Ciroma and Umaru Dikko gained renewed visibility on the self-defeating platform of military rule. Some of them became ministers while others were quite active in the Constitutional Conference of 1995. Once Abacha had concluded the strategy of winning over major political figures, they fell at his mercy and lost the moral basis to challenge his authority from they had benefited. As such, virtually no politician of commendable calibre emerged from the national moral debacle (except perhaps Bola Ige who was assassinated under mysterious circumstances in 2001). All that the politicians and the Nigerian populace could do was to plead with the military authorities to relinquish power peacefully. Through its hold on power and by innuendoes of terror, the military had become the moral barometre of the nation. This point becomes more relevant when we notice the number of hitherto powerful political figures that were ruthlessly silenced. Olusegun Obasanjo, the first president of the Fourth Republic, was clamped in jail and might have died there. Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, his erstwhile deputy, was also put in jail where he died under mysterious circumstances. Both Obasanjo and Yar’Adua had been convicted for the alleged Colonel Lawan Gwadabe-led coup plot. M.K.O. Abiola, the presumed winner of the June 12 presidential elections, was also thrown in jail where he eventually died without having realised his mandate. Kudirat Abiola, his wife, was assassinated on June 4, 1996 on a street in Lagos by the henchmen of Abacha. Before her murder, Alfred Rewane, a seventy-nine-year-old frontline nationalist and pro-democracy activist, had also been assassinated in his home by a detachment of Abacha’s henchmen in October 1995. The allegation at the time was that Rewane provided 111

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financial support for the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), the pro-democracy organisation. These ghastly assassinations followed a pattern similar to the killing of Dele Giwa, a prominent journalist, in October 1986 when Babangida was in power. Under the reign of Abacha, Gani Fawehinmi, a prominent civil rights activist was also clamped in jail and so were his equally dynamic compatriots, Femi Falana and Beko Ransome-Kuti. Journalists were habitually arrested for holding anti-government views and were often tortured. Media houses were closed down and the residences of prodemocracy activists became targets of arson by secret service operatives. In 1994, the home of Air Commodore Dan Suleiman (rtd), a pro-democracy activist, was bombed under suspicious circumstances. After the incident, Suleiman went into exile. Several other prodemocracy activists fled the country after persistent harassment from the security services. Prominent among them were Wole Soyinka, Bolaji Akinyemi, Bola Tinubu and, most surprisingly, Anthony Enahoro who moved the motion for national independence in 1953. Lt. General Alani Akinrinade’s (rtd) palatial house in Lagos was bombed. Akinrinade, who had once been Chief of Defence Staff under the Shagari regime, also had to go on exile. It was strongly speculated that his association with the broad-based political alliance, the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), was responsible for the unprovoked attack on his home. Soyinka’s home in Abeokuta, Ogun State was also raided. His travails had not begun or ended there: he narrowly escaped being murdered in his hotel room in the United States of America at the tail-end of 1995. In addition, during the first quarter of 1996, his play, The Trials of Brother Jero, was stopped from being staged by a Lagos-based theatre group by security service agents. Israel Eboh, the director of the play, asked for justification and the simple answer he received was; “for security reasons… the national interest”. This preoccupation with intellectual matters on the part of the security forces was to a large extent created by totalitarian paranoia. For instance, in April 1996, the late Bola Ige, the former civilian governor of Oyo State, was to launch what was an innocuous book at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA) in Lagos, but the occasion was disrupted by security agents. In other words, Abacha’s reign was filled with terror. When Kudirat Abiola was murdered on a street in Lagos, it was yet another opportunity to crack-down on pro-democracy forces. M.K.O. Abiola’s 112

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first son, Kola was thrown into a police cell and members of the prodemocracy organisation, the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) - Solanke Onasanya, an eighty-year-old man, Abraham Adesanya, a senator in the Second Republic, and Ganiyu Dawodu were all detained. Many other pro-democracy activists were also forced into exile. When Saro-Wiwa was hanged, Tom Ikimi, the Minister for Foreign Affairs went on overseas trips claiming that the Nigerian judiciary was a model of excellence and that the Nigerian press enjoyed considerable freedom. Yet Nosa Igiebor, the editor-in-chief of Tell newsmagazine, was hurled into detention in 1995 and released only seven months later without any charges levelled against him. In addition, over 300,000 copies of the magazine were seized by state security operatives within eight months. As a result, 24.5 million naira was lost by the company during the regimes of Babangida and Abacha. The editors of the magazine also received constant death threats stating that the “Rewane treatment” would be visited upon them. However, Nigeria was able to emerge from the height of Abacha’s terror to launch a noteworthy campaign for democracy. Abacha signified unabashed terror and it can’t be said that the nation has thoroughly purged itself of his ghost. Olusegun Obasanjo rose out of the belly of that terror. The seeds of Abacha’s fascism are evident everywhere and they can re-germinate with stealth or brazen terror. In other words, the complete purge of the terror Abacha left in his wake is the beginning of a new democratic cycle. Terror and Developmentalism in Ogoniland One of the measures taken to pacify the agitations of oil-bearing states by the Babangida administration was the establishment of the Oil-Mineral Producing Areas Development Commission (OMPADEC) through Decree 23 of 1992. It was meant to serve eight sates and fifty local governments within the federation. Albert Horsfall was made the commission’s first chairman. The chairman and the members of the commission, by the decree, were to serve for a period of four years and their tenure was renewable only once. The primary task of OMPADEC was the reconstruction and development of the oil-bearing communities that fell under its jurisdiction. In attempting to rehabilitate decaying infrastructure where it existed and providing 113

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essential social amenities where none were present, OMPADEC was also mandated to initiate elaborate programmes of research. Even before its establishment, there had been in 1960 the Niger Delta Developemnt Board (NDDB) which was entrusted with more or less the same functions as OMPADEC. The NDDB did more or less nothing to improve the lot of the oil-producing communities. In carrying out its objectives, OMPADEC was allocated three per cent of the Federation Account (a slight increase over the 2 per cent favoured by the civilian administration of Shehu Shagari in relation to the oil-bearing communities). The federal government also gave it considerable autonomy in the disbursement of funds for development projects. However, after a year of operations, there were mixed feelings about the success or otherwise of OMPADEC. The commission published a report entitled “OMPADEC: A Year After” which highlighted the fact that it had been able to provide several communities with motorable roads, school buildings, electricity and science laboratories. Particularly in the forefront of championing the achievements of the commission was its first chairman, Albert Horsfall, a retired civil servant and lawyer. But as was mentioned earlier, there were widespread misgivings about the happenings in OMPADEC. In fact, a group called the Urhobo Study Group publicly disowned OMPADEC, accusing it of ethnic injustices and of failure. Saro-Wiwa too had no faith in the commission and it will be recalled that he called it “a body meant to disburse the peanuts set aside by those who had seized the oil reserves of the delta to the unfortunate inhabitants” (Saro-Wiwa, 1995:108). At the same time, the issue of the chairmanship of the commission became a highly volatile political matter. The following passage stating the position of the Ijaws of Delta State should corroborate this view: We want it noted now that when the executive chairmanship eventually moves to Delta State in accordance with the accepted reasoning of all concerned. That position has to be reserved for the Ijaws who are the No. 1 producers in Delta State (The Guardian on Sunday, March 3, 1996).

With this kind of determined stance, other ethnic groups also strengthened their views as to how OMPADEC was to be constituted. The politicisation of the commission became the basis of ethnic 114

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chauvinism and distrust. But the commission itself had enormous problems of its own as we shall see in the following chapter. Hence, the ethnonationalist chancre that had always impeded the cohesion and the realisation of the political aspirations of the federation in turn degenerated to what, at all events, may be regarded as a minor point of difference. Apart from the majority of the Ogonis who were unimpressed by the records of the commission, the Urhobos and Itsekiris of Delta State also felt excluded from its centre of activity. These feelings of marginalisation and competing expectations of performance clearly eroded whatever credibility the commission might have had: In the eyes of the people, OMPADEC was a national cake that must have everyone on board, every clan must have a staff in its offices, and contracts should be awarded to just about anyone. With that kind of misperception, OMPADEC was bound to have a credibility crisis (ibid.).

In view of this kind of understanding, the commission was unable to accomplish its initial objectives. Oil-producing communities still suffer from abysmal neglect and pauperisation coupled with the now firmly entrenched processes of environmental degradation. The Ogoniland scenario only served to buttress this argument. On Febuary 22, 1996, the Horsfall-led board of OMPADEC was dissolved and a sole administrator in the person of Professor Eric Opia was appointed. Typically of the Nigerian political landscape, his community, the Ndokwa people of Delta State, took up a full page advert in a newspaper extolling General Sani Abacha who had appointed their “son”. The ethnic implication of such an elaborate public gesture ought to be clear enough. OMPADEC had become in several ways an instrument designed for the purposes of granting favours to political cronies. Opia was no stranger to the Nigerian political scene. During the Babangida era, he had contested for the governorship of Delta State under the banner of the National Republican Convention (NRC) and lost to Felix Ibru. However, he managed to get himself elected as a representative to the 1995 Constitutional Conference. His political fortunes blossomed from that moment and so his appointment as sole administrator of OMPADEC did not altogether come as a surprise. The snag, though, was that given his strong partisan background, how would he have been able to 115

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depoliticise the operations of the commission and also dispel the everpresent spectre of ethnicity? As we shall see, Opia did not plan to succeed. Going by most perspectives, the inadequacies of OMPADEC were numerous and hydra-headed and as such they required fundamental and far-reaching solutions which neither the federal military government nor the functionaries of the commission were unwilling and/or unable to apply. Now that we recognise that ethnicity is one of the problems affecting the evolution of appropriate measures to address the grievances of oil-bearing communities, it is also necessary to know what the federal authorities have done in this regard. As the Ogoni agitations for economic and political empowerment increased, the federal government became quite apprehensive. Consequently, the Babangida regime in 1993 promulgated the Treason and Treasonable Felony Decree. The aim of the decree, essentially, was to “dissolve and proscribe any association of individuals of three or more persons… which … is formed for purposes of furthering the political, religious, ethnic, tribal, cultural or social interest of a group of persons or individuals contrary to the peace, order and good governance of the Federation” (R.T. Suberu, 1996:108). This brings back to the point discussed much earlier about the issue of the indivisibility of the nation which was broached in the first chapter of this study. The stance by Nigerian governments generally on the indivisibility of the Nigerian nation evinces an almost embarrassing inability to confront the problems of cohabitating with minorities in the federation. To demonstrate that it meant business in relation to the decree, the Babangida regime went ahead to proscribe bodies such as the Association of Minority Oil Producing States (AMOS), CARIA (Cross River, Akwa Ibom, Rivers, Imo and Anambra), the Committee of Northern Elders, the Committee of Peace and Unity, the Committee of Unity and Understanding, Egbe Ilosiwaju Yoruba, the Middle Belt Forum and other associations of similar interests. It was a miracle that the Ethnic Minority Rights Organization of Nigeria (EMIRON) which later metamorphosed into the Ethnic Minority Rights Organisation of Africa (EMIROAF) under the leadership of Ken Saro-Wiwa escaped proscription. R.T. Suberu suggests that this may have been due to the hastiness in the preparation of the decree (ibid.42). The response of these associations to the government’s proscriptions was by and large lukewarm; none of them was evidently as mobilised and organised as 116

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MOSOP, and consequently, none was able to give the government the required amount of resistance or trouble. MOSOP, in view of this assessment, was unique in being able to raise the level of ethnic minority activism to an extent hitherto unknown before. As the activities of MOSOP gained wider prominence after the Andoni-Ogoni disturbances of 1993, the government found an apt excuse to institute overtly repressive methods for the containment of the crisis. Put differently, the way was paved for elaborate militarisation. To this effect, the Rivers State Internal Security Task Force (RSIS) was set up with Major Paul Okuntimo as its chairman. Okuntimo in true military or rather fascist fashion thought the crisis could only be quelled through brute force. A memo sent to the military administrator of Rivers State captured, in no small measure, his frame of mind: To: His Excellency the Military Administrator of Rivers State From: The Chairman Rivers State Internal Security (RSIS) Subjects: RSIS Operations: Law and Order in Ogoni etc Observations * Police in Ogoni remain ineffective since 1993. * Shell operations still impossible unless ruthless military operations are undertaken for smooth economic activities to commence. * Akwa Ibom and Opobo borders inadvisable because of inaccessibility. Added to disagreement between Opobo/Andoni making cooperation by the former unrealizable. * Division between the elitist Ogoni leadership exists. * Either bloc leadership lacks adequate influence to defy NYCOP decisive resistance to oil production unless reparation of 400 million dollars paid with arrears of interest to MOSOP and Ken Saro-Wiwa.. Recommendation/Strategies: * * * * *

Intra-communal/kingdom formulae alternative discussed to apply. Wasting operations during MOSOP and other gathering making constant military presence justifiable. Deployment of 400 military personnel (officers and men). New checkpoints slightly different from operation Order No. 4/94 dated 21/4/94 by Commissioner of Police Rivers State command. Direct daily report to MILAD.

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* * * *

*

* * *

Wasting operations coupled with psychological tactics of displacement/wasting as noted above. Press monitor and lobby. Restriction of unauthorized visitors especially those from Europe to the Ogoni. Monthly press briefing by the Chairman of Rivers State Internal Security (RSIS). Financial Implications (Estimates/Funding) Initial disbursement of 50 million naira as advanced allowances to officers and men and for logistics to commence operations with immediate effect as agreed. ECOMOG allowance rates applicable as earlier discussed. Pressure on oil companies for the prompt regular inputs as discussed. OMPADEC stands as arranged.

REMARKS * * * * * * *

The Ikwere-Ijaw-Ahoada (Obagi) agenda for skeletal operations until full economic activities commence in Ogoni. Surveillance on Ogoni leaders considered as security risks/MOSOP propellers. Present Secretary to the State Government obviously sensitive (Ogbakor/Ikwere connection) Modifications of the programme continuously. Ruthless operations and high level authority for the task force’s effectiveness. Direct supervision by MILAD to avoid unruly interference by other superior officers. RSIS independence necessary despite some Mobile Police Units of the Nigeria Police Force (MOPOL) inputs.

This incendiary memo was obviously a highly “restricted document” (CLO Annual Report, 1994:214). The Okuntimo-led military operation promptly set to work in instilling fear, sowing discord and causing mayhem. Indiscriminate burning of private buildings, rape, looting and extortion became commonplace in Ogoniland. It was this kind of repression that created an almost unbearable feeling of siege within the militarised territory. The victims of this reign of terror were not only Ogoni indigenes. Geraldine Brooks, a journalist reporting for the Wall Street Journal of New York, was manhandled and unceremoniously deported. Similarly, the Civil 118

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Liberties Organisation’s Nantei Oronto-Douglas and Uche Onyeagocha, who were connected with its Environment Rights Action (ERA) project, were also apprehended by Okuntimo’s henchmen and susbsequently detained and tortured. Fortunately, they were released afterwards and warned never to return. The two environmentalists were able to offer a graphic account of the military operations in Ogoniland: The pattern of invasion is the same from one village to another. The soldiers drive into town at top gear, shooting into the air at first, cackling in war-like voices to jump-start the villages into panic. Then they go in for the kill, chasing, arresting, beating and shooting at the fear-stricken folks, extorting money, food items, livestock including live goats, chicken, garri, rice, eggs, and valuables like jewelry, radio, television and video sets are very welcome. But money is a major target since there are no banks in the villages and inhabitants keep much of their cash at home (Oronto-Douglas and Onyeagucha, CLO Annual Report, 1994: 214).

Added to the brutality was the military braggadocio that had become the histrionic fanfare of authoritarian African political regimes. Major Okuntimo had boasted in a press conference that he was versed in 221 ways to terminate human life. He had said: I just take a detachment of soldiers and stay at the four corners of the town. They will…(word not clear) the town, but they have automatic rifles that sound dead. If you hear the sound, you will freeze! And then I equally now choose about 20 and give them grenades, explosives and very hard ones. The machine gun with 500 rounds will open up. When 4 or 5 like that open up, and we are throwing grenades into the bush and it goes BOOM! then they know that I am around. And what do you think the people are going to do? And then, we have already put road-blocks on the main road. We don’t want anybody to start running, so that the option we made was that we should get all these people into the bush, with nothing except the pants and wrapper they are using for the night; we should get everybody into the bush. (Cited in the CLO Annual Report, 1994: 215216)

In its first year of operations, the RSIS combed out virtually all the villages of Ogoniland using the same pattern of psychological intimidation and military terrorism. By Okuntimo’s estimation, in this 119

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period of siege, Gokan was hardest hit by his activities. Explaining his terroristic methods to The News magazine, he had revealed: I sent them into the bush to put them in a defensive position whereby they will ask for the favour of airing their views. After days and nights of sleeping in the bush, they started making representation…the solution to the Ogoni crisis requires more of psychological approach since the people are pursuing a goal that they will get 400 million dollars from the federal government as royalty. You require a psychological approach to rewind them out of the mobilization. (Cited by the CLO Annual Report, 1994: 219)

Indeed, Major Okuntimo’s brutality knew no bounds. Esther Kiobel, the widow of Dr. Barinen Kiobel, one time Commissioner for Commerce, Industry and Tourism in Rivers State under the administration of Lt. Col. Komo (whose government had provided the organisational support for the clampdown upon the Ogonis), had a sorry tale to narrate. Incidentally, Dr. Kiobel had been based in Britain until 1992 when he came back to take up a lecturing appointment with the University of Science and Technology, Port Harcourt. Esther Kiobel’s major grouse is that her husband’s death had been premeditated and unlawful. She complained: “I believe that before the trial started, Komo had declared my husband guilty. He used Alhaji Kobani to declare my husband guilty” (The Guardian on Sunday, November 12, 1995). She visited Major Okuntimo who she claimed was “the brain behind her husband’s hanging” (ibid.) and received a very rude shock: he did not allow her to see her husband because she refused to “do what other women did” (ibid). Her pleading and weeping did nothing to secure her request. Instead, Okuntimo struck her across the face leaving his fingerprints on it. It was yet another instance for him to boast about his famous 221 ways to kill a human being. The following week, Kiobel returned with a tray of food meant for her husband and this time Okuntimo had a few soldiers beat her up and then she was stripped naked. Her hands and legs were tied and after which she was hurled into an open van heading for Kpor where she was detained for one week. The hanging of the Ogoni Nine, no doubt, did considerable damage to the tremendous gains of the protest movement. Even Ledum Mittee’s confidence was profoundly shaken. For many, he 120

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simply became a sell-out. Speaking in a fashion that would have been inconceivable for Saro-Wiwa, Mitee had pleaded on behalf of other Ogoni indigenes who were in detention: .

All doors are not closed yet. My appeal is that lives should be saved. Shedding more blood cannot help Ogoni. General Abacha still exercises his prerogative of mercy in the circumstances (ibid).

After the executions of the Ogoni Nine, the Rivers State Government established the Ogoni Reconciliation Committee on Peace. Apart from the restoration of law and order, the committee was also charged with developing the local government areas situated in Ogoniland. The committee included first and second class traditional rulers from Ogoniland, prominent indigenes of the area and youth in addition to Major Obi Umahi, the commander of the Rivers State Internal Security Task Force (replacing Okuntimo), who was to coordinate the affairs of the committee on behalf of the government. But the seriousness or otherwise with which the government viewed the question of reconciliation would be exhibited in due course. Mitee spoke of the need to “forgive and forget” but the spirit of the symbol of the Ogoni struggle, Ken Saro-Wiwa, was not allowed final and complete repose. His businesses were run down through government-engineered persecution and the workers of his companies were driven underground. The government’s approach towards the crisis did not change for a long time after Saro-Wiwa’s death and most of the recommendations of Okuntimo were followed to the letter. Propagandistic skills were deployed to camouflage the real situation in Ogoniland. The repression of pro-MOSOP figures continued unabated and there were incessant arrests and forced evacuations of people to extinguish the merest insinuations of dissent. The only factor that kept the embers of the struggle alive at this point seemed to be the political support of the international community for the Ogoni cause. Nigeria’s human rights record during the Abacha era became appalling and this reputation was due to a large extent to the disconcerting manner in which the Ogoni crisis had been handled. Rather than peace returning to Ogoniland as the reconciliation committee might have wished, disunity and discontent within the territory increased. For instance, March 15, 1996 was a particularly tragic day for Nsaa Korsi of Giokoo. This woman, who was in her early 121

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forties at the time, was viciously attacked by the agents of the RSIS in the presence of her eighteen-year-old daughter. As a result of the attack, she was rendered partially paralysed and also mentally affected. In line with government policy, the operatives of the RSIS were not only entrusted with “sanitising” Ogoniland but also had to present a wholesome picture for foreign journalists and fact-finding missions from overseas. So, arguably, these missions in fact heightened the tensions in the territory since the government was frenetically at pains to impress the visitors. Pleasing the visitors in this regard meant nothing other than the distortion of truth together with a crackdown on voices of opposition. Korsi was seen as a dissenter by government-sponsored local collaborators and was consequently singled out for punitive treatment. Her daughter had much to say her ordeal: After the foreign visitors had gone, they took my mother to the camp from Giokoo palace, made her to lie face down on the ground, beat her with whips, crushed her with their boots and smashed her all over with the butts of their rifles. The soldiers said she always hid in our house people who wanted to tell the foreigners the true situation of things in Ogoniland (The Guardian on Sunday, April 13, 1996).

As hinted earlier, these fact-finding visits by foreign observers became a source of considerable discomfort for MOSOP sympathisers and activists. Once they become aware of the imminence of such tours, they had to abandon their homes and head for the bushes until such a time when the missions had departed, otherwise the kind of fate that befell Korsi might repeat itself. Innocent Ogoni indigenes had to confine themselves to usually unmotorable bypaths and mosquitoinfested bushes to avoid the armed convoys that paraded the length and breath of the land. Nnaa Bariko narrated to The Guardian on Sunday the modus operandi of the security operatives: Evacuation usually takes place two hours before foreign journalists or observers arrive. Usually, we don’t know these foreigners because nobody dares to go close. But the security agents know in advance since the foreigners always inform the government of their coming. From Kpor, word will be sent to the paid agents to appear as real inhabitants of the community. And, at times the soldiers would turn out in mufti (ibid.).

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Barikor went on to explain the extent to which this art of deception was perfected: With these agents there, any strange person is promptly arrested. The agents will be engaged in such relaxed pastimes at playing ludo and draughts. Immediately the agents see the foreigners coming, they signal their people at Giokoo junction who, in turn, signal the soldiers and fake inhabitants in Giokoo itself. The soldiers then go into hiding, leaving the agents to talk to the foreigners. Some of these agents pose as paramount rulers of the communities (ibid).

When the United Nations team led by Atsu-Kofi Amega visited Ogoniland in late March 1996, it provoked “another season of crackdown” (Ibid). A.D. Deekor, the paramount ruler of Bera, was arrested for the fifth time on that occasion. His twenty-four-year-old son was severely beaten and 1,000 naira was stolen from his wife. His ordeal did not end there as he was taken to Kpor where he was detained for a week and made to lie on the bare floor of a cell with eight other detainees. Five days before the arrival of the UN team, the security operatives were already hard at work. The Ogoni villages of Nweol, Birara, Lewe, Giokoo, Mogho and Barako were raided. Members of MOSOP and the Federation of Ogoni Women Associations (FOWA) were singled out for victimisation. In early April, some Ogoni activists were said to have been detained in various centres around the Tai-Eleme axis. However, this elaborate and brutal crackdown did nothing to discourage those willing to express their grievances to the UN team. They came out waving leaves and placards in full view of the team after which they were driven off the streets. A fresh series of crackdowns followed to punish the intransigent activists. The repressions did a lot to alter the vibrancy of the resistance movement in Ogoniland. For a long time, fear stalked every nook and cranny. Strangers were avoided like a plague and very few were willing to express their true feelings about the Ogoni situation. The “psychological approach” that the Okuntimo-led RSIS initiated appeared to have had a significant impact. Also, much capital was made of the schisms within the Ogoni leadership structure which were in turn vigorously amplified by the activities of the government. Dr. Kudo Eresia-Eke, who was the Commissioner for Information and Culture in Rivers State at the time, strongly supported the 123

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government’s crackdown on MOSOP activists and the deeds of the RSIS. Eresia-Eke, a doctoral degree holder in political theory and who was a former lecturer at the University of Port Harcourt, minced no words in exonerating the activities of the military in Ogoniland: We don’t take that mess here. We do not. Because it does not give a good image of the Federal Government […] And I must say that, over time, the discipline has been very good. I can tell you. And they (the soldiers) do the right thing (ibid.).

Anti-Ogoni attitudes such as those expressed above provoked equally passionate responses from Ogoni indigenes such as Johnson Nna, an insightful political commentator who constantly condemned the political structure and leadership in Rivers State. The ruling elite, in his view, was largely responsible for numerous woes of the state. Ethnic confrontations could have been aggravated when Eresa-Eke observed that “the Ogonis have provided four out of the total of 17 Information and Culture Commissioners for Rivers State” (ibid.). With almost every indigene of the state possessing this frame of mind, a general feeling of alienation and distrust was bound to prevail. Indeed alienation became an entrenched problem in Rivers State. Nothing encapsulated the feeling of despondency and of the impending dismemberment of the resistance better than a remark of Ledum Mitee: If you talk of reconciliation, it has to be total because we are talking about over 2000 people dead already. To resolve the conflict, you need to look at the root causes of it and try to eliminate them. There is suffering because soldiers have been introduced to “decree peace” in Ogoniland. Then again, the issues that led to this situation still exists. The things we said in the Ogoni Bill of Rights, no one has bothered to say anything about them. These are issues that have to be put on the table (ibid.).

There were serious issues that truly needed to be addressed and these went beyond the responsibilities of River State alone. In fact, they bore directly upon the entire federal arrangement of the polity. Attempts were made to confront these problems but there was also an equally demanding problem regarding the honesty and seriousness of those attempts. For instance, the federal government inaugurated on December 26, 124

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1995, the National Reconciliation Committee (NARECOM) and made Alex Akinyele, a former Minister for Information, its chair. In addition to devising means through which the June 12 presidential crisis may be resolved, the committee was also charged with looking into the Ogoni crisis and its multiple fall-outs. More precisely, its terms of reference were to: (1) ensure ways and means to secure the co-operation and participation of various interest groups in the transition programme with a need to strengthening unity and stability. (2) examine and establish dialogue with Nigerians at home and abroad with a view to participate fully in democratization within the context of the transition programme; (3) make recommendations on any issues that will help promote peace unity and smooth implementation of the transition programme.

Alex Akinyele was just getting a feel of the job when a wellpublicised spat with the fire-spitting Minister of Special Duties in the Abacha regime, Wada Nas, occurred. Such inter-governmental squabbles served to undermine public confidence. There was also the larger question about the health and stability of the Nigerian political arena with did nothing to dispel generalised skepticism. If we view this chain of events against the backdrop of the Ogoni crisis, a certain consistency revealed itself. Militarism had radically transformed the Nigerian public imagination. To all intents and purposes, a martial mentality had become the bedrock of virtually every sociopolitical process that had occurred in the country for several years. There were the Murtala-Obasanjo task force on port decongestion, the Buhari-Idiagbon task force on the recovery of public property and the very notorious Lagos State task force on environmental sanitation. Even the brief Second Republic was not spared this apparently endemic mentality. The Shagari-led administration created a task force for the importation and distribution of rice. This trend reflected a continuous militarisation of the Nigerian polity. Indeed, task forces became quite infamous. An example was the Lagos State task force on environmental sanitation which has been mentioned. This task force created a lot of havoc and misery for the people of Lagos without securing any lasting goals. Markets were arbitrarily closed down and street hawkers were viciously man125

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handled. The incessant closures of Lagos markets in turn led to sharp increases in the cost of food commodities and other consumables. So rather than the numerous problems in the city being alleviated, another kind of siege was laid. Indeed the ad hoc basis on which most of the task forces were established precluded any actual transformative impact on society. In Nigeria, it had always been in the military mindset to galvanise civil society in a purely martial fashion. This affected the ways in which humane and credible institutions of civil society could be developed. After prolonged military rule, this problem persisted and subsequent civilian administrations are likely to find it difficult to completely demilitarise the polity. Military solutions were ab initio the preferred approach of Nigerian governments and nothing reflected this fact more than the handling of the Ogoni crisis. The Imperatives of Truth and Reconciliation In spite of these bleak indicators, Nigeria is important for so many reasons. It is the most populous nation in the African continent. Further, apart from being blessed with several mineral resources such petroleum and iron ore, it is also blessed with a dynamic and resourceful people. Thus a combination of these natural and material endowments ought to have paved the way towards substantial economic and sociopolitical development. Unfortunately, this has not occurred. Indeed, Nigeria’s problems are myriad and multi-layered a lot of which are often induced by poor decision-making and lackluster management at the higher political levels. Perhaps it would be necessary to recount some of these problems. Of course an exhaustive account at this stage is not necessary as most of them have been mentioned in the course of this study; nonetheless, governmental corruption would rate as a major impediment. From this emanate several other daunting obstacles to nation-building. Nigeria now ranks as one of the world’s twenty poorest nations while adult life expectancy is fifty-three years. Adult illiteracy stands at forty-three per cent while an estimated two-thirds of Nigerians live below the poverty line. With this brief sketch, other problems could be left to the imagination: health, urban insecurity, infrastructural decay, unemployment etc. Yet the potentials of Nigeria as a nation cannot be underestimated. It has all the potentials to assume political, moral, economic and 126

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diplomatic leadership in global affairs. Having said that, Nigeria is one of the best examples of how a nation should not be run. Its disastrous history of protracted military rule has virtually destroyed all facets of its national existence. And militarism is a scourge that mere cosmetic reforms cannot eradicate. Latin American nations such as Mexico have demonstrated more than sufficiently that militarism as a form of politics often transcends its immediate spatio-temporal context. This is a point we noted only recently. In other words, insidious modes of governance often carry within mechanisms of perpetuation. Ernest Wamba-dia-Wamba illustrates this point as regards the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the following manner: Mobutism must be understood as a body of political dictates on the post-colonial state (this as a historical form of politics) if we hope to clearly bring out what needs to be avoided or destroyed in the transformation of our society and the construction of a new state (1998:45).

Similarly, it has been noted that “civilians internalise dictatorial military culture of immediate effect”, while in their service. In this way, they reproduce the culture of militarism even under civil rule” (Momoh and Adejumobi, 1999:36). Olusegun Obasanjo, the first elected ruler under the fourth democratic dispensation, highlighted this ominous tendency within the first few weeks of his tenure, thereby eliciting charges that he was out to run an imperial presidency. Indeed, instead of abiding by clear-cut constitutional procedures regarding law-making and in dealings with elected members of the Houses of Assembly, he found it more convenient to disregard them. Thus, as repeatedly stressed in this study, militarism as an institution of rulership often goes beyond itself in weakening vital formations of civil society. Also, as we have seen, civil society, having had its basis and functions eroded by the dynamics of militarism, in turn mirrors and promotes the values, structures and characteristics of the latter. By extension, the completion of the transition to democratic rule programme should not be followed by a period of complacency. Rather, it should be followed by a period of heightening and strengthening political vigilance among the various sectors of civil society. At this juncture, some of the vital questions that form the major thrusts of this part of the study ought to be raised. First of all, it is 127

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pertinent to note some of the trajectories and ravages of prolonged militarism within the Nigerian political context, and how these verities decide the ethical barometre and both the historical and political evolution of the nation as a whole. Given this somewhat broad question, the earlier observation that militarism develops innate instruments of prolongation (not only of its own rebirth and growth but also bears the potential for the erosion of civil society generally) becomes even more striking. After the political terror of the Babangida and Abacha regimes, how did Nigerians seek to redeem themselves? One way was to institute a process that addressed the question of social memory and collective guilt. The discourse of truth and reconciliation has assumed topical and global importance and of course, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa has an immense bearing on this development. But in spite of the moral magnitude of this powerful sociopolitical process, the stakes of truth and reconciliation are not always so easy to negotiate. A number of events in contemporary global history attest to this fact. In this instance, the War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague set up for investigating the injustices in former Yugoslavia and also the one established in Arusha in relation to Rwanda readily come to mind. It was noted by Michael Ignatieff that: Justice in itself is not a problematic objective, but whether the attainment of justice always contributes to reconciliation is anything but evident. Truth, too, is a good thing; but as the African proverb reminds us, “truth is not always good to say” (1996:10).

The establishment of a truth commission in any society usually depends on the configuration of political forces in that society. A major problem that faces societies intending to reconcile with horrendous sociopolitical histories is the temptation to separate truth from justice. In this regard, “seeking truth is not an end in itself for victims; they need to feel that in some way or the wrong done to them has been partially righted. At the same time, the pursuit of truth does not necessarily mean show trials or endless vengeance” (Rolston, 1996:36). Archbishop Desmond Tutu frames the problem in a somewhat different fashion: 128

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Experience world-wide shows that if you do not deal with a dark past such as ours, effectively look the beast in the eye, that beast is not going to lie down quietly; it is going, as sure as anything, to come back and haunt you horrendously (1996:39).

Tutu adds that “in the matter of amnesty, no moral distinction is going to be made between acts perpetrated by liberation movements and acts perpetrated by the apartheid dispensation” (1996:43). And then lending his voice to the debate, F.W. De Klerk says that “reconciliation… cannot be achieved unless there is also repentance on all sides… No single side in the conflict of the past has a monopoly of virtue or should bear responsibility for all the abuses that occurred. Nor can any side claim sole credit for the transformation belongs to us all” (1996:57). As a final word on the functions and problems of truth commissions, Michael Ignatieff’s views are particularly instructive: The truth commissions closed many individual dossiers in the painful histories of their nation’s past. At this molecular, individual level, they did a power of good. But they were also charged with the production of public truth and the remaking of public discourse. They were to generate a moral narrative - explaining the genesis of evil regimes and apportioning moral responsibility for their deeds (1996:112).

Undoubtedly, the discourse on truth and reconciliation is bound to remain topical and would also retain its prime place on the scale of national and global priorities. Wole Soyinka in a lecture appropriately entitled “Engaging the Past: Lessons from South Africa” revisited the issue and his propositions when not thought provoking were decidedly provocative. An example of such is the view that we ought to …globalise certain categories of crimes - that is, recognize that there are certain crimes which transcend the initial borders of their commission. It seems so simplistic as to be almost banal but nations have been plagued by a tendency, to live by a false criminal dichotomy - one that enabled it, for so long to collaborate in the tracking down of bank robbers, murderers, condemned men and women, rapists, drug traffickers etc., but never, hardly ever for those identitical crimes when they are committed in political circumstances, or a mass scale (1999a:26).

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Linking up with the Fourth Nigerian political context Soyinka warned: Those who are strutting around today, secure in the cloak of immunity are ready yet again to act true to type if the circumstances change yet again, and their services are required in the course of perfidy, of large-scale robbery and a sadistic domination of Nigeria society. (1999a:25).

His simple conclusion was that all culprits currently operating in the Nigerian political sphere were to be brought to book. It was another question entirely whether the arrayed political forces would allow for such a juridical endeavour or whether the required political will could be mustered for that objective. To be sure, several atrocities were perpetrated by the Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha juntas. Furthermore, there is strong evidence to claim that the administration of General Abdusalami Abubakar which concluded a transition-todemocracy programme carried out large-scale financial fraud that could jeopardise subsequent political dispensations. Soyinka and his ilk were advocating comprehensive probes into these various atrocities to initiate what he deemed to be a much-needed national moral rejuvenation. Others would much rather we forgot the past and got on which the future. According to Soyinka, “the past will always return to haunt us, unless we first take steps to exorcise its ghosts” (1999a:25). However, recent Nigerian political history is such that entire sectors of the populace had been compromised and had had their moral fabric severely undermined when not damaged. General Ibrahim Babangida initiated and perfected the strategy of undermining the political class in order to prolong his dubious legitimacy on the one hand and weaken civil society on the other. As noted, Sani Abacha was even more brutal in this respect. At this juncture, perhaps it would be useful to present a more systematic catalogue of atrocities of the Babangida and Abacha regimes so as to discern what bearing it has on the prevailing discourse on truth and reconciliation. As we have noted, the regimes of Generals Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha are as yet the most devastating in Nigeria’s tortuous political history. Both dictators never intended to hand over political power to civilians, yet both embarked on deceptive transition-todemocracy programmes that caused the Nigerian nation several 130

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billions of naira. Momoh and Adejumobi write: …the philosophy of the transition programme was (…) centred on economic deregulation to allow for capital accumulations and on the political scene, to permit authoritarianism, in order to allow for control of the entire populace, both military and civil. The transition programme, i.e. the PTP, was therefore designed to fail. It is a malleable paradox that Babangida, the architect of this nebulous philosophy was unwilling to accept responsibility for this and shifted the blame of his failure to the politicians (1999:56).

The duplicity of General Babangida was further underscored by the fact that he enlisted a core of gifted scholars to provide ideological justification for his deceitful programmes. Several gargantuan bureaucracies were created not only for the purpose of deceiving the Nigerian populace together with the international community but also as avenues for massive economic corruption. Some of these bodies include the Political Bureau, the National Electoral Commission (NEC), the Directorate for Social Mobilisation (MAMSER), the Centre for Democratic Studies (CDS) and the Code of Conduct Bureau. In the end, all these bloated bureaucracies turned out to be largely ineffectual watering-holes for political favourites. After the fall of the regime, they were all dissolved. Misappropriation of public funds more or less became institutionalised by the Babangida administration. The country is still reeling from its seemingly unstoppable ravages. More than anything else, what signified Babangida’s intention not to handle over power was his creation of two government-funded political parties. He had claimed he wanted create a new breed of politicians uncorrupted by the destructive divisiveness of earlier politicians. In this respect, it has been noted that; with the gradual withdrawal of state funding for the two political parties and given the enormous financial outlay required of both to run the parties and prepare candidates for elections, the parties quickly relapsed into the stranglehold of the money-bags (Momoh and Adejumobi, 1999:136).

Furthermore, Babangida revealed that he knew those who might succeed him and those who would not. As such, his transition programme was strictly monitored and teleguided as so many political analysts claimed at the time. Babangida’s nebulous programme ended 131

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with the annulment of the June 12 presidential election which created a profound political impasse for Nigeria and which also raised immeasurably the stakes of truth and reconciliation in the public arena. The annulment is truly a watershed in the Nigeria’s political history because it resulted in a rigorous examination of the institutions of civil society, national values and priorities, conceptions of morality and accountability, the demands and obligations of leadership and citizenship and of course the military as an institution. Also, because civil society itself became enfeebled and corrupt in Nigeria, Babangida was able to pervert and subvert accepted norms and standards. For instance; “Law” for Babangida (...) does not mean respect for the rule of law or due process. It simply means the ability of the state to enforce obedience, obeisance, induce recognition and silence opposition, put people into quietism without recourse to questioning the correctnesss, justness or otherwise of the action of the state (Momoh and Adejumobi, 1999:118).

But in spite of the progressive weakening of civil society, the pauperisation and immiseration of the general populace, coupled with the repressive tactics of political exclusion practiced by the regime in its bid to perpetuate itself in power, it collapsed under the weight of its own intrigues. Babangida’s self-seeking agenda played itself out soon after the annulment of the June 12 presidential election, after which the chimerical Interim National Government (ING) was installed. This questionable political arrangement was in turn toppled by General Sani Abacha whose regime bore to all intents and purposes similar traits with the Babangida junta (Osha 1998). Wole Soyinka also noted the striking similarities between the two regimes in terms of methods of co-option, entrenchment and repression. Nonetheless, differences can be said to exist at the level of political repression. It can be argued that the Abacha junta was decidedly more tyrannical and more disrespectful of civil liberties. The Babangida junta made a show of honouring human rights even though it did the opposite in fact. The Abacha regime never bothered with such false courtesies. This was manifest in the manner in which state repression became more pronounced and systematic. Consequently, gross human rights abuses were committed which Nigerians have to address in order to resume the challenge of development and sociopolitical reconstruction and 132

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also the quest for a broader democratic culture. Nigerian society as a whole faced a debilitating dilemma: should it just about forget the past and proceed with the challenge of the future, or should it revisit the state-engineered violations of civil liberties so as not only to avoid the same mistakes being committed again but also to evolve an ethics of politics to safeguard the nation from wanton abuses? Undoubtedly, this dilemma was reflected in various regional, ethnic, religious and ideological ramifications such in which several collective political identities were revealed. On this question, it was not easy to arrive at a clear-cut consensus. This was, in part, because prolonged militarism severely enfeebled civil society and also destroyed basic but meaningful ethical orientations. In the process not only were values and institutions been affected, even more distressingly people were implicated and compromised. After death of General Sani Abacha on June 8, 1998 a lot of unsavoury revelations came to light. It came to be known that the late dictator supported several assassination squads such as the K-Squad, Strike Force and the Special Squad. Furthermore, his numerous security operatives began to confess to numerous state-sponsored crimes. In particular, the confessions of Major Hamza Al-Mustapha, the Chief Security Officer to Sani Abacha, and Colonel Frank Omenka, former head of the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI), were noteworthy. Given these tarnished antecedents, it became apparent that some collective analysis of the events of recent Nigerian political history was required. Gross human rights abuses had been committed in the name of the state, so there were fervent calls for a definite national policy as to strategies for investigation and redress. Quite a number of short-sighted politicians and unaffiliated opportunists had benefited financially from Abacha’s self-succession adventure to the detriment of the larger society. This crop of careerists continued to present problems for the current democratic dispensation. Thus the meaning of reconciliation assumed very fluid dimensions in this context. Was it meant to be synonymous with “forgive and forget” or was it meant to be a working through the horrendous events of recent Nigerian political history? These were the two main ideological proclivities of the debate, in somewhat crude terms. It appeared as if the former discursive orientation was gaining the upper hand for reasons of sheer political expediency. The puritanical viewpoint such as was exemplified in Soyinka’s stance enjoyed the 133

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support of staunch pro-democracy activists but faltered in the realm of practical politics. The reason being that the regimes of Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha were relentless in undermining the moral basis of the political class and even to a large extent civil society as a whole - and yet the same compromised political class was needed in fostering the evolution of a democratic political culture. For the purists, the rhetoric of truth and reconciliation in its ideal sense ought to be pursued with utmost vigour for genuine national rejuvenation. This continual conflict between ideals and practical realities was evident during the formation of the political parties in which some prodemocracy activists were classified as being rigid while those in the opposite camp were considered unrepentant opportunists. It was within this state of affairs that Nigeria embarked upon its fourth democratic adventure. President Olusegun Obasanjo’s eventual political rehabilitation must be one of the more surprising events of contemporary political history. He had been incarcerated for allegations relating to a phantom coup plot by the Abacha regime and had been suffering from ill-health. After General Abacha’s death, General Abdulsalami Abubakar released him from jail and he was promptly convinced to launch a well-funded presidential campaign under the auspices of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP). It came to pass that he won. But the conflictual political constellations mentioned above were also at play during his eventual assumption of political power. General Babangida, in an obvious bid to redeem his shattered political image, was alleged to have persuaded Obasanjo to run for office. He was also said to have funded Obasanjo’s presidential bid to the tune of US$50 million (MajaPearse, 1999:46). It would also be recalled that convincing evidence exists implicating Babangida in the misappropriation of $12.4 billion resulting from the Gulf War oil windfall (Maja-Pearse, 1999:46; Okonta and Douglas, 2001). In the same vein, Babangida was responsible for the annulment of the June 12 presidential election. So for many Nigerians, it was curious to have such a character acting out powerful behind-the-scenes roles. Even Obasanjo was castigated for his role during the annulment of the election. It was proven that he encouraged the establishment of the Interim National Government (ING) headed by Ernest Shonekan. The point is, at what instance could Nigerians claim to have an innocent moment in their political development? It was hard to tell, and even purists were hard put to answer this 134

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important question. An index of the complexity of this dilemma was the widely touted allegation that Moshood Abiola was the main sponsor of Babangida’s coup in 1985 because of differences between him (Abiola) and the Buhari/Idiagbon regime (Maja-Pearse, 1999:19). To be sure, it was not easy to find an appropriate or suitable point of departure for the task of moral and political reconstruction. General Babangida committed unforgivable transgressions against the generality of Nigerian nation, yet he also managed to influence the birth of the fourth democratic dispensation. Olusegun Obasanjo, with his antecedents as a military dictator and as a supporter of governmental arbitrariness, eventually became the president of the Nigerian nation. And so at what point could the nation commence its much-needed self-examination? Furthermore, even the regime of General Abdulsalami Abubakar was alleged to have carried out large scale financial fraud in spite of its relatively successful transition-tocivil rule programme. Perhaps Olu Falae, a prominent politician, captured both the basic and intricate ramifications of the scenario most appropriately; he had noted, “what I think they may do is take off the uniform, drop the gun, put an agbada, grab naira and use naira as the gun to rule us” (quoted in Maja-Pearse (1999:1). This perplexing dilemma is what happens when nations and societies put off the prerequisite rituals of criticism for too long. The question then, was, at what point could the process of national self-examination begin? Another way of framing the vexatious issue of the national question is that it concerns “the question of how every Nigerian can be made a citizen (in the real not the nominal sense) of his country and related to this, the problem of how to create an appropriate sociopolitical framework for the conciliation of interests among them” (Olusegun Oladipo, 1999:26). Still on the issue of posing questions, Jacques Derrida avers: Something that I learned from the great figures in the history of philosophy, from Husserl in particular is the necessity of posing transcendental questions in order not to be held within the fragility of an incompetent empiricist discourse, and thus it is in order to avoid empiricism, positivism and pychologism that it is endlessly necessary to renew transcendental questioning (1996:81).

Within the Nigerian ethical and political context this endless questioning was left unattended for too long. At the moment, the major 135

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problem at this juncture, is, how to pose the national question without an irretrievable lapse into the dead-end of ethnicity or a slide into genocidal conflict. Posing the national question in Nigeria often wavers between these two destructive polarities. Judging from the foregoing, no approach to the Nigerian national question can be deemed the most appropriate or the most desirable. Civil society has become severely weakened and efforts ought to be made to rebuild and strengthen its various branches and institutions; the media, the trade unions, the academic community, the non-military professions etc. This is because “prolonged military rule has (…) attenuated the democratic and constitutional principles and channels of conflict resolution, which encourage political exchanges and bargains rather that suppression of conflicts” (Osaghae, 1998a:12). There is also the necessity to address the question of minority rights and strategies of devolution and power sharing in the ongoing quest for democratic consolidation. Other strategies for developing a viable democratic culture while also strengthening civil society within the Nigerian political terrain ought to include a conscious programme of de-militarisation of the public sphere. The public sphere as it is presently constituted is not just an appendage of the military, but it sometimes appears to be a continuation of militarism in disguise. Once this is acknowledged, then perhaps the necessary vigilance for the reconstitution of the public sphere can be cultivated. In essence, de-militarisation ought to entail a definite programme of social and political transformation. Let us set aside the issues pertaining to democratic consolidation and militarism and return to the problems of oil-producing communities. It would not be entirely correct to say that the successive federal governments of Nigeria were unaware of the multitude of problems that face oil-producing states and communities. In fact, they were aware. But the solutions to the problem of the oil-producing communities lie in the formulation of appropriate and widely accepted modalities for addressing the needs of these communities. Again, this can be viewed from the perspectives the Nigerian federation generates. In other words, in seeking to assuage the grievances of oil-producing communities we must also recognise that there are conflicting versions as well as visions of federalism within the Nigerian polity, so that the debates about what the most suitable conception of federation entails have been expectedly acrimonious. Thus, instead of rational 136

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disinterestedness informing this crucial area of public discourse, it has been (like almost most spheres of the Nigerian sociopolitical existence) marked by a disturbing degree of intolerance and sentiment thereby making genuine advancement in political terms exceedingly difficult. Globality and Regression During the height of military dictatorship in Nigeria, Wole Soyinka faced a dilemma he undoubtedly faces all the time given his numerous transnational engagements as a literary artist of global fame. He often has to talk about his country, Nigeria, -perhaps often in unflattering terms- and this must indeed be a very difficult task. Thus as a model of artistic excellence, he often has to speak about a highly embarrassing political context. During the regime of the late Sani Abacha’s dictatorship, he was invited to a conference in Ethiopia with the theme, “From Concord to Discord: The Horn of Africa”, around the period when the June 12 presidential elections were to be annulled by the military. Naturally the expectations of the participants at the conference had been high. Nigeria, it was widely perceived, was finally on the way to moral and sociopolitical leadership and fulfilment. But before the commencement of the conference, the military struck once again and Soyinka was saddled with the distasteful task of explaining the failure. In that instance, he personified both the setbacks and the potential of the Nigerian nation. More important, he personified a terrifying question that had to be answered and torn by these antagonistic sentiments, he had to recreate and convey an unpleasant reality. When one thinks of Nigeria, one usually remembers the accomplishments of its numerous creative heroes - Chinua Achebe, Ken-Saro Wiwa, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti and so many other accomplished individuals - but it is hard to locate parallel successes in the political field and figures such as Soyinka are often called upon to explain this ironic lapse (Jeyifo, 2003). Delegates and participants at the conference had come up to him to make various inquiries. “Why have you people done this to us?” “Do you know what you’ve done, what example you’ve set?” “Do you know how much we had looked forward to citing you as an example?“ “We were holding you up as a model to instruct our people on how it should be done.” Undoubtedly, Soyinka, in those circumstances, would have devised and executed a scheme of evasion. Years of trying 137

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to keep ahead of the different goons of Nigerian military and civilian dictatorships had made him exceptionally nimble and alert. However, once back in Nigeria, he was to offload his vitriol regarding the national reality on an equally brutalised audience. Casting his gaze on the Nigerian nation, Soyinka informed his Nigerian audience that he wished he was not a Nigerian. He also mentioned that the natural resources with which the country was endowed had become a serious impediment to growth (which within the mineral sector is known as the Dutch disease) and so he would be better off as a citizen in a resource starved country. Finally, he said that given Nigeria’s natural endowments, much more in terms of development should be expected of her. Such bombastic statements have come to be expected of him. Perhaps there is an aspect of Soyinka’s personality that not only enjoys but also attracts this kind of attention. Undoubtedly, Soyinka revels in attention which dates back to the time he was incarcerated in the late 1960s during the Nigerian civil war. He not only became a national hero of sorts but also an international figure. When Soyinka says he wishes he came from a resource starved nation, one knows precisely what he means. For decades, petroleum, has been a curse rather than a blessing to the generality of Nigerians. Before then, palm oil had served as the mainstay of the colonial economy and so the history of oil in its various forms has also been a catalogue of woes. Oil has been a resource that had always enriched a few and immiserated the most. In the ravaged and ecologically damaged Niger Delta region of Nigeria, oil has blighted the lives many people. One might ignore the fact that many watercourses have been polluted. One might also forget about the numerous farmsteads that have shriveled due to the combined logic of unfavourable global and local processes. We should think instead about the hundreds of people who have had their lives cut short by bullets shot by government troops, we should also ponder the thousands of people whose livelihoods have been destroyed by all sorts of environmental mishaps. Furthermore, we may think about not only families but also entire communities that have been disfigured by the anti-human politics of petroleum exploitation. The point is, since the beginning of oil exploitation activities in the Niger Delta, the entire fabric of everyday life has changed. Livelihoods have been destroyed and the youth see no reason to take up farming or fishing. They would rather work for 138

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the oil companies that contribute to the misery of their lives since they pay much more, or become extortionists and claim levies from nonindigenes who come to conduct one business or the other on their lands. Ordinarily, when one thinks of oil, one also thinks of wealth. However, in general terms, Nigeria is one of the poorest countries in the world but as Bill Clinton said, Nigeria is too rich to be poor. It has been an interminable story of the national wealth plundered by a selfserving compradorial elite drawn from the military establishment and an equally morally bankrupt political class. Again, one would expect that a country blessed with so much petroleum resources would have the resource in abundance in its numerous petrol stations. However, the contrary is the case. We often hear about reality outstripping fiction. In Nigeria, social reality clearly has outdone the grimly grotesque in a very peculiar way. In an oil rich country, long and immobile queues are very common. Before the era of deregularisaton, shortages were caused by the inefficiencies of the sole government oil company, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), or by the government itself in order to increase prices. Here, in times of scarcity, the rush and scramble for the increasingly elusive black gold sometimes seems more intense than the late capitalist rush to the bottom. Prominent newspaper columnists have written manuals about how to survive the chaos and the violence of the oil rush at filling stations in times of need. Let us dwell on the consequences of oil scarcity more concretely. Without petrol the average nation more or less has its functioning stalled. Nigeria presently has no exportable agricultural produce. Consequently, petroleum scarcity and increases in prices have farreaching reverberations with costs of public transportation rising by as much as 500% in difficult times. Large scale transporters in turn charge far more for all manner of business transactions from the transfer of imported manufactured products to that of locally produced items of food. Given this scenario, instant and galloping inflation is the result. Currently, the level of poverty in Nigeria is better seen than imagined. Similarly, the sociology of beggary has assumed newer characteristics. Apart from usual destitutes who have been an integral part of the rural areas and cityscapes there are new categories of economically dispossessed people wrenched from the country’s 139

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historically feeble middle class. Those who feel buoyed by the numerous multi-million dollar poverty alleviation schemes need not be, since it is the same government that desperately seeks the favours of the Bretton Woods institutional order and transnational capital that “promote” those “programmes of alleviation“. Economic globalisation, as we know, entails drastic cuts in public expenditure and a denigration of welfarist sentiments and leanings. It is now clear that the structural adjustment programmes carried out by the Ibrahim Babangida regime from the mid-1980s onwards according to the principles of the IMF failed woefully as they failed in most parts of Africa. Nigerian specialists on IMF monetary polices in sub-Saharan Africa such as Adebayo Olukoshi have devoted several volumes to this widespread failure. The same levelling politics of gas consumption is at work here. Being wealthy entails having not only a fleet of cars but also one or more electrical generating sets. That means fuel consumption taken together would be quite high. The problem is how is level of consumption (in times of scarcity) of petroleum products- petrol, diesel, gas maintained? In most cases, even the exorbitant black markets are unreliable, so it means they are not the best source for fuel products. One might want to know why an electrical generating set is required in the first place. The simple answer is that electricity supply in Nigeria is as erratic as ever. Many individuals have slid irretrievably into the abyss of deprivation and poverty through the destruction of various electronic gadgets by this on-off type of electricity supply. A parastatal agency monopolises electricity generation nation-wide – National Electric Power Authority (NEPA). Of course, the corporation cannot be sued if one’s refrigerator, TV or computer happens to have been ruined by the fluctuations caused by its ineptitude. Entire neighbourhoods go without electricity for many months. Without these two vital sources of energy - petroleum and electricity - how global can one get in present-day Nigeria? How easy is it to domesticate events such as the cybernetisation of the self and virtual reality that have become a central feature of the developed world and most developing regions? One cannot be appreciably global or virtual, one would venture from most accounts, given the multiple configurations and compressions of time and space in the context of late capitalism. A wide variety of social, cultural and political forms 140

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and infrastructure are required to become sufficiently global. Most of these infrastructural forms are lacking in Nigeria. By this, one means affordable computing systems and of course, constant electricity supply. The government is clearly unable to provide these facilities under the present local and global conditions and private enterprise is much too motivated by profit to create far-reaching social change. Mafias control the petroleum and electricity sectors and government lacks the will to sanitise them. This is because these mafias work for the electricity generating corporation that is meant to supply electricity for all and sundry. Instead of curbing the activities of these mafias government is usually too preoccupied with holding on to power. Yet, with all its abilities to cause social disarticulations and disaffections, petroleum is a kind of glue for the polity at least from the point of view of the political class. Petroleum has also bred arrogance and profligacy within the privileged (high-level government technocrats and big business people) classes. On the other hand, the youth of the Niger Delta (where the bulk of resource is to be found) are becoming increasingly ungovernable. They are angry that the oil companies derive so much wealth from their lands and put back too little in return. Perhaps they might decide the future of the nation if conditions permit. Even in the face of a supposedly democratic and secular dispensation, the question of religious fundamentalism remains crucial. Out of the 36 states of the Nigerian federation, over 9 have adopted the Sharia legal code. The federal government was clearly confounded by this development. It is only when we read about “guilty” people losing limbs in accordance with the code and the public whippings of those found wanting by advocates of the code do we know something is amiss. The president, Olusegun Obasanjo, during the period the code was first introduced, could tell the world that the introduction of the Sharia code would not affect the volume of foreign business investments. One wished this had been true. The introduction of the code in the northern parts of Nigeria led to religious conflicts in notably Kano and Plateau States. Undoubtedly, the religious tensions between Muslims and Christians have become more palpable since the code was made a reality. For business, insecurity of life and property is usually bad news. Teeming masses of Nigerians huddle together on most nights in darkness, tropical heat and swarms of mosquitoes contemplating 141

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perhaps, the meaninglessness and violence that is Nigeria- doing nothing most of the time. Most telephones lines are dead and those that are not are beyond the reach of most. Internet connectivity is also scarce and uncertain in most parts of the country. The point is, militarism just as colonialism is not episodic, rather, is processual and epochal. The uniform and the gun are two of some of its most prominent symbols. These national totems of fear have done a great deal to brutalise the Nigerian collective psyche. Literacy levels are low and as such the public investments in those two symbols in terms of an ill-considered legitimacy have been quite enormous. Obviously the deconstruction of their inadequately interrogated primacy has to be systematic, rigorous as well as broad-based. This task has not been initiated in a systematic manner. Of course, the current democratic structure was planned and instrumentalised and is being maintained by powerful military interests. This alone poses a great difficulty. Ernest Wamba dia Wamba, the Congolese philosopher of history who under unacceptable postcolonial conditions - in which war, genocide and different kinds of authoritarianisms have featured prominently - abandoned the more sedate precincts of the academy in order to become a guerrilla fighter, is always stressing one crucial point in his articles (Osha, 2005c). He argues that Mobutism as a historic form of politics extends beyond Mobutu himself and those within his clique. Mobutism, has become in other words, an entrenched mode of misgovernment and sociopolitical interaction. This argument was found to be true after the downfall and death of Mobutu and when Laurent Kabila assumed power. As we all observed, Kabila’s reign turned out to be a continuation of Mobutism. Nepotism was rife, governmental accountability and transparency nonexistent, and Kabila spent his days out scheming transnational mineral prospecting interests (Nabudere, 2004). Thus political developments in the Democratic Republic of Congo bear some resemblance with those in Nigeria. Paraphrasing Wamba dia Wamba,- who has a number of critics, for example, Nabudere (2004)- it can be said that militarism as a form of politics extends beyond itself. Each time the Nigerian populace assumes that the end of military rule and the beginning of democratic governance spell the end of militarism and indicate an epistemic break. Chinua Achebe, in his slim monograph, The Trouble with Nigeria (1983), states that the question of leadership has been the bane of 142

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Nigerian political troubles. But the issues of citizenship are equally important (Fawole and Ukeje, 2005). How alert have Nigerians been as citizens or subjects? Who do they expect to perform the task of nationbuilding for them? Are these questions fully articulated in the public sphere? The opposition parties are both too disorganised and feeble to present worthwhile alternatives and there is an evident postdemocratic crisis in the movements for sociopolitical reform and the consolidation of civil society that grew out of the mass struggles against military dictatorship. All of a sudden these movements seem irrelevant and cannot find what to do with themselves under a democratic dispensation as opposed to a military one (Adejumobi, 2004, 1999). Each night Nigerians lie down to succumb to the malarial heat, mosquitoes and other unwholesome conditions thinking; Will there be a shortage of fuel tomorrow? Will there be electricity for five minutes so that one can perhaps iron a shirt? More than ever before, the national question poses a grave dilemma. But there were expectations that the numerous non-governmental organisations that came into existence during military rule would seize the chance provided by the democratic opening and indicate avenues for collective empowerment of the citizenry. There is a need to rearticulate the internal arrangements and relationships within the nation. There is also the need to cause the political awakening and empowerment of the citizenry. The opposition parties need to be strengthened just as the civil rights movement must find new ways of being relevant. Finally, the critique and deconstruction of militarism have to be carried to their logical conclusions. To achieve this, it is necessary to continue the critique and dismantling of the residue of militarism that taints democratic dispensations that emerge afterwards.

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Chapter Five

A Logic of Global Terror

In order to understand the various ramifications of the Ogoni crisis, it is necessary to view how the combination of local and global political terror unleashed the peculiar brew that has transformed not only Ogoniland but the Niger Delta as a whole. It is the mix of local and global terror that created the volatile situation that affects the entire region. The expansion of capital, to a large extent, must be blamed for the various forms of destruction affecting the Niger Delta. We would recall that “the Niger Delta has substantial oil and gas reserves. Oil mined in the area accounts for 95 percent of the country’s foreign exhange earnings and about one-fourth of Gross Domestic Product.” (Okonta and Douglas, 2001:18) The aim of this chapter is to provide some important theoretical interpretations for political terror in relation to the crisis in the Niger Delta. In order to do so, I would address Okonta and Douglas’s study of the crisis and suggest ways in which it can be construed theoretically. I shall also address broader phenomenologies of political violence in a manner that has not been attempted so far in this study. In this instance, there are two main ways to imagine and interpret political violence. The first will be to analyse the political violence caused by multinational capital and the second, to analyse the violence endangered by the postcolonial state. In this regard, Shell is the biggest oil corporation operating in the Niger Delta. The politics of oil exploration and consumption to a large extent shapes the politics of the global. Accordingly, “at the global level, oil and natural gas are inseparable from geostrategy. The quest of the powerful consumer nations for access to energy on their own terms runs parallel to the clashes over agricultural subsidies […]. In the energy sector, the natives of producer countries are good natives as long as they guarantee supply of oil and natural gas at prices that are low enough to be acceptable to companies and governments in the rich consumer countries and high enough to keep the nodding-donkey producers of Pennsylvania and the shareholders of the oil majors happy” (Shelly, 2005:196). The United States consumed 19.9 million barrels of oil a day 144

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in 2001. It would need 31.8 million barrels a day in 2025. In 2003, China consumed 5.59 million barrels of oil a day. In 2030, it would require 162 billion cubic metres of natural gas a year. In 2002, India consumed 2.1 million barrels of oil most of which was imported. In 2030, it is projected that it would need 5.6 million barrels. Toby Shelley (2005) frequently highlights the fact that China and India have become important nations on the global scale of petroleum consumption. Before the discovery of oil, we will recall that the Niger Delta region was the most significant palm oil exporting zone in Africa. The palm oil exporting business created an opportunity for the beginning of colonial relations that were essentially driven by the expansion of global capital. George Goldie Taubman, a British merchant who was also instrumental in the making of modern Nigeria, “embarked on trading practices that cut off the once flourishing Delta ports from the outside world which plunged the populace into unprecedented penury from which it has never been able to recover.”(Okonta and Douglas, 2001:13) When the indigenous traders of the region revolted against the economic blockage, “the Consul General of the newly established Niger Coast Protectorate sent a naval force to Nembe Creek, attacked the town, and razed it to the ground. Two thousand unarmed people, mostly women and children, were murdered.” (ibid.14). The point, is, economic factors were primarily the reason for the British incursion and subjugation of the geographical space that came to be known as Nigeria. Indeed, “Nigeria was created by British merchants and soldiers of fortune primarily to serve the mother country’s interests as nineteenth-century capitalism entered the stage of imperialism, and desired even more sources of cheap raw material and also new markets for its products”. (ibid.27) The violence that began in the Niger Delta at the dawn of colonialism worsened in the postcolonial era when petroleum was discovered. Consequently “oil is the stuff of contemporary Nigerian politics, and the Niger Delta is the field on which the vicious battle to control this money spinner is waged. The civil war that raged between the breakaway Eastern Region and the rest of the country from July 1967 to January 1970 was not so much a war to maintain the unity and integrity of the country […] as a desperate gambit by the federal government to win back the oil fields of the Niger Delta from Biafra.” (ibid.24) Of course, this argument was also made by Saro-Wiwa. After the defeat of Biafra by the federal forces, a process of internal 145

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colonisation commenced which has not quite been reversed. This particular form of political violence was part of the strategy to maintain the “peripheral-capitalist structure of the economy” of Nigeria. Accordingly, the concept of the rentier state has been applied to the country: Terisa Turner has applied Ruth First’s concept of the “Rentier State” to Nigeria’s post-civil-war political economy, pointing out that the country is sustained not by what it produces, but on “rent” on production: here, the oil industry, where investments, production, marketing, and sundry expertise are completely dominated by multinational corporations that simply pay taxes and royalties to the state. Thus the entire state apparatus becomes a commodity for rent to the highest bidder, a bizarre bazaar presided over by a “commercial triangle” of state officials, local middlemen, and foreign suppliers. This group cannot thrive outside the state political economy, which partly explains the dizzying succession of military coups and electoral frauds the country has been afflicted with since independence. State power is everything, and to be without power is to be condemned to unremitting poverty. (ibid. 29)

As the oil based economy grew, so did governmental corruption. As Okonta and Douglas point out, “everybody wanted a piece of the action, not least British Aerospace, which concluded a controversial 22 million pound ($35 million) kickback deal with Nigerian government officials in order to secure a contract for the supply of eighteen Jaguar ground-attack fighters worth 300 million pounds ($480 million). It was in fact the Jaguar deal that finally pushed junior military officers to demand an end to the Second Republic and subsequently brought General Muhammadu Buhari to power after a military coup in December 1983” (ibid. p.30). By the time, Buhari took over the reins of power, “twenty percent of the nation’s oil was being smuggled out of the country” (ibid.). The structural adjustment programme (SAP) did the rest of the economic damage. In the mid-eighties, 44 percent of Nigeria’s entire export earnings were being used to reduce its debt dependency. As the economic downturn continued, oil-producing communities in the Niger Delta began to agitate for better treatment from the federal government and the multinational oil concerns. In response to these agitations, the Babangida regime - as we noted in the previous chapter - established an agency, the Oil Mineral Producing Areas Development 146

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Commission (OMPADEC), “with the` responsibility of monitoring and managing ecological problems associated with the production and exploitation activities of the oil companies. It was also expected to act as mediator between them and the communities when problems arose” (ibid.33). However, OMPADEC as an agency established to improve the conditions in the oil-producing areas was a woeful failure under both the Babangida and Abacha regimes. For instance, three years after it commenced operations, OMPADEC had committed itself to projects worth $500 million. Interestingly, the bulk of money paid out for projects “completed” was to contractors whose addresses could not be traced. When Eric Opia, head of the panel set up by the Abacha junta to probe Horsfall’s tenure as chair of the commission, was appointed Sole Administrator of the agency, he proceeded to loot OMPADEC in an even more brazen fashion. By September 1998, when he was kicked out for “gross financial misappropriation,” Okonta and Douglas claim Opia had embezzled some $200 million set aside for the development of the impoverished communities of the Niger Delta” (ibid.p.35). Perhaps the failure of the agency is to be expected since it was not properly equipped to carry out its functions. A World Bank team that studied the workings of the agency in 1995 discovered that “(1) there was no emphasis on environmentally sustainable development; (2) the commission did not have the requisite personnel to enable it to meet its ecological mandate; (3) there was an absence of long-term planning; (4) there was little or no project assessment, and where projects were initiated, maintenance requirements were not built into them; and (5) there was no integrated approach to development planning, which should have involved the local communities and other government agencies in the area”(ibid.33). The problem of corruption was not just limited to OMPADEC. In fact, it had assumed national proportions and has not really subsided since then. We noted earlier that Babangida, the Nigerian military dictator, started the practice of billion dollar embezzlements. The Pius Okigbo panel that looked into the (mis)use of funds that accrued to the national treasury as a result of the Gulf crisis of 1990-91 revealed that “between September 1988 and June 1994, US$ 12.2 billion of the $12.4 billion [in the dedicated accounts] was liquidated in less than six years…they were spent on what could neither be adjudged genuine high priority nor truly regenerative investment; neither the President 147

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nor the Central Bank Governor accounted to anyone for these massive extra-budgetary expenditures…” (ibid.36-37). In view of this scale of brigandage, Okonta and Douglas point out “the only legacy that Ibrahim Babangida bequeathed to Nigerians before he was removed from office was the democratization of corruption and the corruption of democracy”.(ibid.) There is certainly a lot of truth in this assessment. Sani Abacha was no better. In fact, as we have noted in the course of this study, in some ways he was worse, just as he was a more brazenly brutal dictator than Babangida. For example, at the time of his death in June 1998, Nigeria had over eight thousand political prisoners in its prisons. Also, in less than five years, Abacha and his henchmen looted $10 billion from the national treasury. General Abdulsalami Abubakar who took over from Abacha and who handled over to the fourth democratic dispensation with Olusegun Obasanjo at its helm, is also heavily tainted by the scourge of corruption. Okonta and Douglas state that “Abubakar awarded to himself, the disgraced former Head of State Ibrahim Babangida, and a handful of senior generals and business associates - including the ubiquitous Gilbert Chagouri eleven oil exploration blocks and eight oil-lifting contracts worth billions of dollars. Then the generals turned their attention to the country’s foreign reserves. In the short space of three months-between the end of December 1998 and the end of March 1999 - $2.7 billion had vanished from the national coffers”(ibid.40). So both the governments that set up organisations to address the problems of oil-producing regions, as well as the organisations themselves, were riddled with corruption. Even the Petroleum (Special) Task Force that was established in 1995 with the supposedly upright Muhammadu Buhari, a former Head of State, was “accused of nepotism and financial recklessness” (ibid.38). The various governments of Nigeria have generally not acted responsibly towards its citizenry as a whole, let alone the oil-producing regions. In pursuing their narrow interests they have created conditions of chaos and neglect in the Niger Delta. After the failures of OMPADEC and the PTF, the post-Abacha democratic dispensation set up the Niger Delta Development Commission to address the need of the oil-producing communities just like its predecessors. It remains to be seen how successful this organisation will be in the pursuit of its objectives. Indeed, since it was set up within a context of extreme politicisation and strife it is likely to be only more marginally successful that its 148

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predecessors. Shell also does not have an enviable record in the Niger Delta and within human rights circles. For instance, it has been revealed that Shell collaborated with the apartheid regime in South Africa: “Shell’s business interests in the country date back to the 1920s. The company has always maintained a cozy relationship with Afrikaner merchants in South Africa. Today the conglomerate owns 50-percent stake in Abecol, asphalt manufacturing firm, and another 50-percent holding in the controversial Rietspruit open-cast mine in the Transvaal. Shell also owns over eight hundred gas stations in the country”(ibid.48). It has also been pointed out that Shell’s hands in the hanging of Ken SaroWiwa were not all together clean: It is the measure of how powerful Shell has become in Nigeria and the extent to which its business interests had merged with the designs of one the most brutal and corrupt regimes in the world that Dr. Owens Wiwa, brother of the environmentalist, told journalists he had a meeting with the former managing director, Brian Anderson, in his home in Lagos in May 1995, and that Anderson said he could effect Ken Saro-Wiwa’s release from detention but would only do so if MOSOP called off its international campaign against his company (ibid.48).

There are also policemen specially assigned to provide security for the company’s operations in Nigeria. Their duties include providing administrative assistance, intelligence and surveillance operations and supervision of the armouries. This collaboration with armed personnel was employed in September 1993 when “over a thousand Ogoni were killed in the villages of Eaken, Gwara, and Kenwigbara. An estimated twenty thousand more were rendered homeless.” (ibid.p.125). In fact, it is claimed that Shell officials met with senior military men and security operatives over plans to exterminate the Ogoni. The amount of damage the company’s operations do to Nigeria is quite enormous (Shelley, 2005). The Niger Delta used to be a region blessed with wildlife and it is claimed that “it has more freshwater fish species than any other coastal system in West Africa”(Okonta and Douglas, 2001:63). Furthermore, “the World Bank has drawn attention to its importance as home to a great variety of threatened coastal and estuarine fauna and flora, and to the need for preservation of the biodiversity of the area because of its rich biological resources”(ibid.). 149

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However, it is unlikely that the biodiversity of the region will be preserved because the company is “one of the biggest contributors to global warming” (ibid.67). Indeed some of the damage already done cannot be undone, given that “an approximate twenty-two square miles of mangrove has been cut by Shell in its Eastern division alone in the course of its seismic operations, a considerable amount of fauna and flora have been destroyed, expelled, or damaged beyond repair during the period” (ibid.69). Bush pig, iguana, monkeys (some rare) have had to flee the destroyed and polluted forests. Some species have become extinct. Acid rain corrodes not only zinc roofing but also contribute to the destruction of fauna and flora.Creeks and swamps are not left out of the relentless assault: In the course of separating the oil from water, Shell officials use chemicals to induce settlement in the tanks. The end product of this separation process is thick, oily sludge which combines with firefighting chemicals like Halon, already in the tank, to form a potent mixture. This hazardous substance is then discharged into the swamps and rivers. The Bonny River estuary, the swamps around Forcados, and the Warri River near Ughelli, where Shell discharges its production water, have been contaminated after nearly four decades of receiving this cocktail of dissolved and dispersed hydrocarbons, sludge, and fighting agents (ibid.87).

The description above gives a picture of what life is like in the rural areas. In major cities such as Port Harcourt, the politics of oil production has also affected ways and quality of life where “the poor majority are banished to the sprawling waterfront slums and the other ghettos where there is no electricity, water supply, or sanitation facilities. Here also, refuse collection and dumping is inefficient and badly managed, and waste dumps have taken over whole streets, vying with human beings for space” (ibid.192). In addition, in cities such as “Warri and Port Harcourt, armed robbery, hooliganism, prostitution, and sudden, seemingly inexplicable explosions of street violence have become a way of life” (ibid.). Okonta and Douglas claim that Shell practices ecological racism as the standards the company applies in Western nations are much better than what the Niger Delta receives. In order to cover up the violence of its activities, Shell has had to resort to spin-doctoring. The Okonta and Douglas write:

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“Shell has found common cause with the trinity of Andrew Neil, former editor of the London Sunday Times; Donu Kogbara, another journalist, who is, incidentally, Saro-Wiwa’s niece; and Richard D. North, the ex-Independent journalist whose controversial book, Life on a Modern Planet: A Manifesto for Progress, is a battering ram of the resurgent right-wing attack on the environmental movement in the United Kingdom” (ibid.172).

Okonta and Douglas’s book is a graphic account of how global capital in collaboration with local power unleashes terror on the poor, of how it destroys human beings and the environment and how it erects elaborate mechanisms it hide the extent and gravity of its violence. It not only destroys human lives but also constructs historical truths to conceal its destruction. Okonta and Douglas offer a vivid description of the modes of collaboration between Shell and the Nigerian ruling class in undermining important facets of Nigerian sociopolitical life. There are detailed explanations of instances of corruption and charges of ecological racism. But a theoretical framework is not provided for these vivid descriptions of the destruction of human life and both fauna and flora in the Niger Delta. Indeed the activities of transnational petroleum corporations have transformed conventional notions of globality. James Ferguson debunks James C. Scott’s thesis on the capacities of the state for standardisation, homogenisation and grid making argues and instead that as the criminalisation of the state in the African continent continues, “there has been an increasing acceptance of the idea that effective mineral production and endemic violence can coexist. In a number of cases-ranging from open civil war to prolonged low-level violence and insecurity- there has been a dramatic expansion in the role private security companies and professional mercenaries in economically viable enclaves on the continent” (2005:379). This view broadens the conception of violence that oil-producing communities experience in relation to both the state and multinational oil concerns. However, I think the charge of ecological racism which Okonta and Douglas raise is an important one which I will explore in relation to genocide and totalitarian terror. Ken Saro-Wiwa claimed that the Ogoni are victims of genocide. It is necessary to conceptualise the degrees and ramifications of genocide. How can the slow, excruciating death in the Niger Delta through a combination of ecological terrorism and the application of the means of actual extermination be rethought? 151

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Mahmood Mamdani’s When Victims Become Killers provides an indepth exploration of relationships between [de]colonisation, ethnicity and genocide using primarily the Rwandan tragedy as a case study (for analyses of the Rwandan crises and history, see also Jibril, 1995; Lemarchand, 1970, 1995; Mamdani, 1996b; Uvin , 1996, 1998) . One of his main arguments is that “whereas the Hutu were killed as individuals, the Tutsi were killed as a group, recalling German designs to extinguish the country’s Jewish population. This explicit goal is why the killings of Tutsi between March and July of 1994 must be termed “genocide” (Mamdani, 2001:4). Mamdani makes a clear distinction between the Rwandan genocide and the Jewish Holocaust in terms of the processes of extermination: “The Rwandan genocide was executed with the slash of machetes rather than the drop of crystals, with all the gruesome detail of a street murder rather than the bureaucratic efficiency of a mass extermination. The difference in technology is indicative of a more significant social difference. The technology of the holocaust allowed a few to kill many, but the machete had to be wielded by a single pair of hands. It required not one but many hacks of the machete to kill even one person” (ibid.5-6). The point is, the level of technological development within a given a given society also determines the manner and efficiency of the mode of extermination. The relative lack of technological advancement in Rwanda at the period of the tragedy meant that the means of death were also crude and rudimentary. Mamdani also makes an important point about the political construction of ethnic identities in colonial Africa and its correlation with genocide. He indicates the need to differentiate genocide from massacres; “ethnic violence can result in massacres, but not genocide. Massacres are about transgressions, excess; genocide questions the very legitimacy of a presence as alien” (ibid.14). Given this definition, Hutus undertook a major genocidal operation through crude but systematic massacres. The political identities and locations of both victims and perpetrators of genocide are equally important. Mamdani also narrates the tragic case of the Herero population of South West Africa which had been colonised by the Germans (which he does again in Good Muslim, Bad Muslim, 2004). Over 80 per cent of the Herero population was exterminated by the Germans in 1904. The Germans were the settlers and the Herero the natives. The process of extermination was 152

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particularly brutal. They were hunted down with guns, barred from venturing near sources of water and eventually pushed into the Kalahari Desert to an ordeal of slow and painful death. Some of them were used as guinea pigs for genetic experiments on miscegenation involving male Germans and female Hereros. In this instance, victimisation was coupled with feminisation. It is instructive to note that when Nazis set out to exterminate the Jews, the former in this case considered themselves to be natives while the latter were perceived as settlers. Mamdani points out that race branding is a crucial event in instances of genocide. Similarly, the Belgian colonial enterprise constructed Hutus as native and Tutsis as alien and the Rwandan postcolonial state failed to deconstruct this apparently artificial dichotomy and politics of identity construction. In Mamdani’s words, the most telling lapse of the Rwanda revolution of 1959 “was its inability to transform Hutu and Tutsi as political identities generated by colonial power”(ibid.17). On the whole, Mamdani argues that there is a distinction between massacre and genocide; that race branding is usually central in events of genocide, that the level of technological advancement within a given society or country determines the extent of genocidal efficiency and finally, that the political identities of both victims and perpetrators are important in apprehending the underlying dynamics of genocide. His analysis mainly focuses on how those dynamics work under African conditions. Under more advanced technological circumstances, the technology of extermination changes. Activists fighting for a variety of causes in the Niger Delta suggest that ecological terrorism is really a genocidal process. Similarly, within the Western context, scholars have announced the arrival of the post-totalitarian moment (Villa, 1999). In other words, the commencement of the post-totalitarian moment entails a rethinking of other regimes of terror. Totalitarian terror, it is argued, differs in quite striking ways from revolutionary or tyrannical terror. In essence, “totalitarian terror differed from the more familiar cases of revolutionary or tyrannical terror in that it was not really a means at all, but rather a process without end. Its “goal,” according to Arendt, was to reveal the sheer superfluousness of human beings, to show that there are no in-built limits to power’s ability to de-humanize individuals or to render them mere specimens of the human species” (ibid.5). Distinctions are made between these three forms of terror; 153

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“tyrannical terror finds an end once it has paralyzed or even totally dispensed with all public life and made private individuals out of all citizens, stripping them of interest in and a connection with public affairs. Revolutionary terror finds an end when the opposition is destroyed or when the revolution has exhausted all reserves of strength. Totalitarian terror, in contrast, comes into its own only when after the opposition has been destroyed” (ibid.18). Indeed, the Arendtian concept of human superfluity is an interesting one. Under totalitarian terror, human “individuality” is rendered meaningless and Arendt had fears for “a future world in which human dignity no longer exists, in which masses of people are continuously rendered superfluous either through totalitarian instruments or social and economic trends”(ibid.13). The post-totalitarian moment has also been hailed as “the age of genocides and industrial killing” (ibid.14). The concentration camp system is also perceived as a defining feature of totalitarian terror. Hannah Arendt explains it thus: Many things that nowadays have become the specialty of totalitarian government are only too well known from the study of history. There have been almost always been wars of aggression; the massacres of hostile populations after a victory went unchecked until the Romans mitigated it by introducing the parcere subjects; through centuries the extermination of native peoples went hand in hand with the colonization of the Americas, Australia, and Africa; slavery is one of the oldest institutions of mankind and all empires of antiquity were based on the labor of state-owned slaves who erected their public buildings (1973:440).

Arendt points out that it was in fact during the Boer War of the last century that the concentration camp system emerged. Life in concentration camps under totalitarian terror is characterised by a denaturing of the individual, an erasure of memory, consciousness and even the fact of one’s death. The impersonal terror of the camps transforms the inmates “into interchangeable specimens of the human animal” (Villa, 1999:21). Indeed, “camp life was an enormously successful apparatus for producing the walking dead or Muselmanner, examples of the human species who had been stripped of their capacity for spontaneity, for action.”(ibid.28). It would appear that the forms of terror developed in the carceral atmosphere of the concentration camp can easily be appropriated by the state for the prolongation of the 154

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cycles of terror. In understanding how this impersonal rhythms of terror are instituted, the concept of radical evil is useful. On this concept, Arendt writes: What radical evil really is I don’t know but it somehow has to do with the following phenomenon: making human beings as human beings superfluous (not using them as means to an end, which leaves their essence as human untouched and impinges only on their dignity; rather, making them superfluous as human beings). This happens as soon as all unpredictability - which, in human beings, is the equivalent of spontaneity - is eliminated. And all this in turn arises from - or better, goes along with - the delusion of the omnipotence (not simply with the lust for power) of an individual man. If an individual man qua man were omnipotent, then there is in fact no reason why men should exist at all… (Arendt,1992:166).

It has also been pointed out that contemporary human rights culture is a product of the terror of concentration camps and also the lingering fear of totalitarian horror. Let us now attempt to link Western forms of totalitarian terror to some aspects of political terror in Africa. Achille Mbembe argues that savagery was deemed to be prevalent in the colonies because “the colonies are not organized in a state form and have not created a human world. Their armies do not form a distinct entity, and their wars are not wars between regular armies. They do not imply the mobilization of sovereign subjects (citizens) who respect each other as enemies” (Mbembe, 2003:24). In other words, “the colonies are the location par excellence where the controls and guarantees of judicial order can be suspended - the zone where the violence of the state of exception is deemed to operate in the service of civilization” (ibid.). The project of colonisation, apart from its seizures and transformation of lands, human beings and cultures, was also a project of [re]ordering and mastery of geographical space for the purpose of surveillance and for more rigorous modes of bureaucratisation. By extension, “colonial occupation is not only akin to control, surveillance, and separation, it is also tantamount to seclusion” (ibid.28). In a Fanonian tradition of analysis, the point was to maintain lines of separation within colonial territory between coloniser and colonised, black and white people - in the case of apartheid South Africa, black, white, Coloured and Indian 155

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and if possible between classes through a “principle of reciprocal exclusivity” (ibid.). The logic of separation and exclusivity is central to the siege of contemporary Palestine. More importantly, the case of Palestine evinces the correlation between modern totalitarian terror and the logics of late-modern colonial occupation: To live under late modern occupation is to experience a permanent condition of “being in pain”: fortified structures, military posts, and roadblocks everywhere; buildings that bring back painful memories of humiliation, interrogations, and beatings; curfews that imprison hundreds of thousands in their cramped homes every night from dusk to daybreak; soldiers patrolling the unlit streets, frightened by their own shadows; children blinded by rubber bullets; parents shamed and beaten in front of their families; soldiers urinating on fences, shooting at the rooftop water tanks just for fun, chanting loud offensive slogans, pounding on fragile tin doors to frighten the children, confiscating papers, or dumping garbage in the middle of a residential neighborhood; border guards kicking over a vegetable stand or closing borders at whim; broken bones; shootings and fatalities - a certain kind of madness. (ibid.39)

Within the context of totalitarian terror under late capitalism, many concepts such as human rights, dignity and political evil have to be rethought. Part of Mbembe’s thesis is that “under conditions of necropower, the lines between resistance and suicide, sacrifice and redemption, martyrdom and freedom are blurred” (ibid.40). The ways in which these preoccupations with political terror tie up with the Ogoni protest movement are quite interesting. Saro-Wiwa launched the struggle for economic and environmental rights within a certain understanding of human rights which in turn can be located in the Western fear of totalitarian evil. The spontaneity of the Saro-Wiwaled social movement sought to contest the relegation of the Ogoni people to the status of non-beings through the combined power of global capital and state-sanctioned militarism. In this sense, Ogoni counterpower as a form of resistance and agency not only questions the dominance of the Nigerian state in alliance with global capital but, just as Mbembe argues, undermines the distinctions between resistance, martyrdom and freedom. It is also clear that there are degrees and ramifications involved in the genocidal process. Indeed the logic of technological capitalism has 156

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been described as being akin to totalitarian terror: “If the goal of totalitarianism is to reduce human beings to mere examples of the species, technological capitalism has a parallel, if immeasurably less horrible logic. Both are insults to the human status in that they strive to replace human plurality and spontaneity with a kind of oneness (whether of the species or of the “household” blown up to national proportions), while moving us ever closer to rhythms of nature and necessity” (Villa, 1999:188). Multinational capital has unleashed a process of far-reaching destruction in Ogoniland by severe ecological damage and also by its exclusionary logic of dispossession. In a way, the ecological terrorism created by multinational capital in conjunction with the state might be a more fundamental manifestation of the genocidal element than the violence of acute militarisation in Ogoniland. In comparison with multinational capital and ecological damage, military terror is sporadic and less systematic. It is also a tyrannical form of terror to which there is an end. By contrast, the ecological terrorism of multinational capital has set in motion a combination of processes that are akin to totalitarian terror; processes that move according to the rhythms of history and nature.

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Conclusion: Criminalisation and Dissent In the search for solutions to sociopolitical problems such as the Ogoni crisis, two kinds of intervention were suggested. The problem, to be sure, needed to confronted at the immediate level and then even more fundamentally with a long term objective in mind. The first mentioned approach was concerned with reducing the spiralling effects of the fall-out of the crisis and their impact. The second, on the other hand, sought to address the deep-rooted factors responsible for the crisis. This, one could assume, was the more important approach and it was obviously much more difficult to achieve. Two studies, namely the 1995 UNPO report on the situation in Ogoni and R.T. Suberu’s book Ethnic Minority Conflicts and Governance in Nigeria (1996), provide the general outlines for the two approaches mentioned. Some of UNPO’s recommendations which may be subsumed under the first approach included: (1) the withdrawal of the Internal Security Task Force from Ogoniland and reinstallation of a civil authority in Ogoni; (2) the release of Ogonis not charged with offences and assurance of fair trials, in civil courts, for those charged; (3) independent investigations into human rights abuses perpetrated by members of the Nigerian military and security forces; (4) provide emergency shelter and aid to Ogoni refuges and homeless; (5) open talks with MOSOP and its elected representatives towards creating an atmosphere of trust; (6) use of whatever influence the companies have to persuade the Nigerian government to withdraw soldiers from Ogoniland, release all Ogoni prisoners; (7) no more operation in Ogoniland that could provoke further conflict or increase tensions with the communities; (8) a guarantee the Niger Delta environment survey, announced in February 1995, is as objective as possible and that it allows MOSOP to participate.

Nonetheless, most of the recommendations were not followed as can be seen in the worsening situation in the Niger Delta generally. In order to identify the other crucial aspect of the problem which is of a 158

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more fundamental nature, one would have to quote at length what Suberu identifies as manifestations of the “federalist crisis”. They include “the over-centralization of the inter-governmental system; the inadequate recognition of the country’s ethnic configuration in the territorial organization of the federation; the relatively limited development of accommodative, consensual or power-sharing mechanisms; the absence or weakness of key mediatory or regulatory institutions; and the repeated distortion and abortion of democratic institutions and constitutions by the country’s civilian and military elites” (Suberu, 1996:66). These were the two broad prerequisites for managing the Ogoni crisis during its height and perhaps the grievances of other minorities in the oil producing regions. However, residual militarism continued to impede the resolution of the problems in the oil-producing communities. A list of some of MOSOP grievances during the Abacha regime compiled by Nwibani Nwako, the organisation’s acting information officer, demonstrates the distance between official thinking and indigenes of the oil-producing communities. Argubaly, official thinking has not changed very much since the Abacha era as the violent unrests in the Niger Delta demonstrate. Brutality and repression have been the means employed by successive Nigerian governments to deal with the agitations in the Niger Delta. Accordingly, Nwako claimed that in February 1996 soldiers were used to intimidate Ogoni people to withdraw their court actions against Shell for compensation for the Yopla flow station spill. Then, on April 6, Major Obi Umahi launched a “Youth Association of Ogoni Oil Producing Committee” at Finimale Hall, Bori and donated N45,000 to the association assuring them of government and Shell’s support and sponsorship as a counterpoise to MOSOP. The stated objective of the association was to work for the quick return of Shell to the area; Shell held secret meetings with leaders of the group. Between May 4 and 8 of the same year, Umahi, who was the Head of the Rivers State Internal Security Task Force, summoned two secret meetings of paramount chiefs of some Ogoni villages at Kpor and Bori where they were forced to sign documents calling for Shell’s return to Ogoni (The Guardian, Monday, May 13, 1996). Going by the two approaches- de-militarisation and equitable federalisation- suggested for the resolution of the crises in Ogoniland and in the Niger Delta generally, it is obvious that the problems are yet 159

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to be resolved and also that the opposing factions, namely the government and the Ogoni, have become more polarised, even though the Ogoni protest movement has been largely suppressed. There is a related aspect, another important dimension to the Nigerian national question which the Ogoni crisis helped bring to the fore: the imperative of democracy. Here, we can perceive the underlying motives of the government towards the goal of democracy and these motives are, to say the least, not encouraging. As Claude Ake had argued “it cannot be democratic to arrogate to oneself the prerogative of deciding how someone else must choose” (1994;16). But this was precisely what successive Nigerian military governments did and this form of political repression was carried to unprecedented heights by the Babangida and Abacha regimes. Disqualification of electoral candidates became the official means of silencing political opponents. The Abacha administration pursued this method as evidenced by the mass disqualification of candidates at the 1996 Local Government elections. This proved to be an alarming index for its democratisation project. During the Abacha era, politicians were reluctant to forge clear-cut agendas regarding the political future of the nation so as not to offend the military authorities. In other words, the military, as often stated in this study, was the sole arbiter of the democratisation process. And as often argued here, the critique of militarism ought not end with the termination of military rule but should extend into the evolution of the democratic process. As this study has tried to demonstrate in various ways, the military establishment, judging largely from the Nigerian experience, proved incapable of any lasting project of democratisation. For instance, human rights, freedom of the press, minority rights, environmental protection and a good deal else are concepts that authoritarian military systems - in the African postcolony in particular - have been unable to nuture. Ake identifies a major stumbling-block to genuine electoral politics. He writes: Perhaps the greatest obstacle to the entrenchment of democracy in Africa is our disregard of the cultural context of democratic process and practices. All too easily, we confuse the values and principles of democracy with specific historical institutional forms of democratic practice (1992:6).

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Implied in Ake’s suggestion is the issue of elevating the level of political debate in nations seeking to acquire modern democratic ideals as well as aiming to consolidate the culture and institutions that go with them. To do so, far more openness ought to be cultivated in the arena of public discourse, and this by implication necessitates the encouragement of voices and forces of opposition. In Nigeria, this had not always been the case. Journalists were clamped in detention when they were not being harassed by security agents. Media houses were shut down at will and well-intentioned pro-democracy acitivists such as Gani Fawehinmi, Femi Falana and the late Beko Ransome-Kuti (he died in 2006) were periodically harassed. A nation that sent its most brilliant pro-democratic figures into exile or jail could expect very little in terms of ideological and democratic development. Nothing bears out this fact better than Ibrahim Babangida’s botched transition-to-civil rule experiment. The Nigerian nation is still reeling from the consequences of this fiasco.The state of civil liberties for a time became so disappointing that a report prepared by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) which visited the country in October 1995 was aptly titled “A Nation Stolen by Generals”. Even more discouraging was the cultural myopia that led to the needless death of a veritable homme engagé, Ken Saro-Wiwa. He deserved far more humane treatment. Indeed one finds it rather uncharitable that Okello Oculi could write after his death: Ken Saro-Wiwa was still learning the ropes of organized political struggle when the killings of the Ogoni leaders exploded in his face. He was not an accomplished and systematically schooled revolutionary of the intellectual and ideological calibre as Amilcar Cabral or Samora Machel. (The Guardian on Sunday, November 19, 1995).

First of all, Oculi’s article is marred by its undisguised personal bent. He tries to portray Ken Saro-Wiwa as someone suffering from an inferiority complex. This, surely, is simply beside the point. We should not forget the importance Saro-Wiwa came to assume for the Ogoni people and other oil-producing ethnic minorities in the Niger Delta, and if viewed from strictly revolutionary viewpoints, he was as successful as any revolutionary Oculi mentions given the limitations and opportunities that confronted him. Never before, in the 161

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entire history of the country, had the zeal of an entire ethnic minority been ignited by the manner in which Saro-Wiwa mobilised the Ogoni. For good or for ill, the future of the Ogoni was radically transformed. Also, his appeal as a sociopolitical reformer was not confined to the local level. In 1995, Saro-Wiwa won the Goldman Environmental Prize, although being in prison, he was unable to attend the award ceremony. In the following year, he was posthumously awarded the Conde NastTraveller’s Seventh Annual Environmental Award, an award worth $10,000. The Goldman Environmental Foundation subsequently created a Ken Saro-Wiwa Memorial Fund “to protect environmental advocates in danger around the world.” It launched the fund, administered by Human Rights Watch, with a $200,000 contribution. Similarly, a federation of international writers in the French language established a $50,000 award in his name. Within the shores of Nigeria, a high profile anthology of 92 poems by 66 authors, entitled For Ken, for Nigeria, was published in 1996. In 2000, Akeem Lasisi’s Iremoje: Ritual Poetry for Ken Saro-Wiwa won the Association of Nigerian Authors’ prize for poetry. The Abacha regime, on the other hand, had his books removed from the curriculum lists of secondary schools and they were also confiscated from booksellers. While the more progressive segment of Nigerian civil society together with the international community have recreated Ken Saro-Wiwa as a major political and cultural icon, the Nigerian authorities have consistently attempted to diminish the significance of his contributions to various spheres of public life that deal with minority rights discourse and activism, resource control and allocation and environmental consciousness. Undoubtedly, the work of Saro-Wiwa is more or less responsible for the far-reaching changes going on in the entire Niger Delta. Even if we adopt a more critical attitude, we shall discover that more than anyone else in recent Nigerian history, Saro-Wiwa tried to broaden the scope of not only political awareness but also the level political discourse within the Niger Delta and beyond. In addition, his achievements can be evaluated both at the levels of praxis and theory. Indeed, very few have equalled his sociopolitical achievements in contemporary times. In several ways, he was well ahead of his times. Having committed the unpardonable error of killing him what political lessons have been learnt by his death? Not many, apparently. Many political analysts continue to comment on Nigeria’s 162

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legendary resilience. We all marvel at how the beleaguered nation manages to stumble from one crisis to another without experiencing a decisive debacle. The ingredients that could cause the final dismemberment of the nation are present in copious amounts - virulent ethnicity, massive governmental corruption, an over-ambitious and undisciplined military establishment, religious intolerance, widespread crime leading to a breakdown of law and order, acute pauperisation of large segments of the population, collapsed social services and many more minuses complete the picture. This interesting combination of resilience and disorder provides ample material for engaging political analysis. Karl Maierʹs This House has Fallen is certainly one of the most interesting accounts that emerged at the beginning of the century of what may be termed the Nigerian crisis. Maierʹs journalistic expertise and lengthy sojourn in Nigeria coupled with an easy and convincing familiarity with the countryʹs actual antecedents and intellectual history have combined to produce, for the most part, an engaging if somewhat off-beat chronicle. Even more importantly, Maierʹs effort offers new theoretical insights for reading the Nigerian situation. Nigeriaʹs geographical and demographic largeness, its cascading pluralisms and its multiple nexuses are what prevent it from going in the way of former Yugoslavia and Somalia. Where there is no literal centre then that centre would never be at great risk. In other words, the centre is located everywhere and nowhere in particular. Such is the nature of the theoretical dimension one is forced to acknowledge. As it is the fifth largest supplier of petroleum in the world and the most populous black nation on the global map, it is not in anyoneʹs interest to see Nigeria disintegrate. The civil war in Liberia had been a very costly affair in terms of human lives and US taxpayer’s money and yet the country has less than half the population of Lagos. In the preface to his book, Maier lists some of Nigeriaʹs intractable problems: Ethnic and religion prejudices have found fertile ground in Nigeria, where there is neither a national consensus nor a binding ideology. Indeed, the virulent spread of virulent strains of chauvinism in Nigeria is part of world wide phenomenon playing out in Indonesia, the Balkans, the former Soviet Union (2000:xx).

Applying this broad explanatory blueprint, Maier goes on to 163

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supply an impressive array of detail and evidence of how these various problems hinder Nigeria from assuming what is regarded as its rightful place among the comity of nations. When talking among themselves, Nigerians usually conclude cynically that the countryʹs problems are countless and endless, so there is no point dwelling on them. Maierʹs book presents a discursive model of the diverse elements that make Nigeria in its present gnarled formation, and that model, needless to say, is deeply disturbing and in most cases unsavoury. In Nigeriaʹs fourth political dispensation, the dividends of democracy are not yet evident. What can be seen instead are its numerous pitfalls. Also, Nigerians have a depressing inability to look into its past and pronounce a fair verdict on the nationʹs performance. The national centre is everywhere but nowhere in particular. This results in skewered perspectives on urgent moral dilemmas. In other words, the good that comes out of evil in the moral realm causes a paralysing loss of the collective sense of judgement. For instance, how does one explain the fact that the regime of General Abdulsalami Abubakar, which did the uncommon good of ushering in democracy also made away with at least $3 billion in less than six months? What this means is that the President Olusegun Obasanjo administration dare not look into its antecedents. If it mustered the political will to do so, it would also see the fractured image of Ibrahim Babangida smiling with blood on its teeth. As noted earlier on in this study, Babangida bears the singular responsibility of putting Obasanjo in the state house in Abuja through his enormous financial backing. These are just two of the many unpalatable truths that may elude analysis in a systematic manner. Size and the politics of difference have led to the mass production of “truths” in relation to the understanding of the Nigerian collective self. In this case, the sermon of truth is always relative and relational and the Nigerian public imaginary flounders in a morass of criss-crossing descriptions. There are genuinely grotesque moments in Maierʹs book. For instance, his interview with Ibrahim Babangida is quite revealing and important for being able to draw out the ex-dictator from his carefully constructed smokescreen and the excessive and unreal mythologising of avid sections of the Nigerian media. From his inordinately large mansion in Minna, Babangida still commands an enormous amount of power. Furthermore, he discusses with Maier in a way he would not 164

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dare with a Nigerian journalist. Having missed the great opportunity to direct a popular version of Nigerian democracy in 1993, the exdictator is still very concerned about his notorious place in history and how he might regain public favour, and he sees in Maier an avenue for accomplishing this scheme. However, his present life and the projection of his public image turn out to be as disorienting and as bizarre as the peoples, elements and features of [de]militarised Nigeria. Even more disturbing is the portrait of Gani Adams, a leader of the Odua` Peoples Congress (OPC), an ethnic militia. Adams and his kith represent a significant segment of Nigeria’s ʺlost generationʺ. Economically disenfranchised by the massive failure of structural adjustment programmes and robbed blind by greedy politicians and public servants, this lost generation has emerged to be a potent force in Nigeriaʹs current ethno-political configuration (Adebanwi, 2005). Ethnic militias have more or less become an accepted Nigerian feature since law enforcement agencies have proved to be abominably inept and also because socio-economic parity has continued to elude the vast majority of Nigerians. For youth who have no where else to turn, the ethnic militias, just like the streets, have become the only welcoming haven. Other strange narratives include Maierʹs drive through Wukari, a zone in the Middle Belt torn by ethnic strife. What Maier describes is a veritable war zone akin to what one finds in relation to Sierra Leone or Liberia when the crises raged. His description of the traditional ruler of Wukari is even stranger as the little potentate emerges as a denizen of a lost kingdom completely out of touch with the times. In moments like this it becomes easy to see how Nigeriaʹs enormous size provides a protective shield against internal disintegration. From the beginning of the 1980s, Nigeria has constantly been plagued by crises that ought to lead to its demise. Religious wars and ethnic strife (treated in the first chapter of this study) are two major threats to the nation and up till now they still have not been contained in a permanent or convincing manner. The combination of the isolated citizenry and disconnected political leadership coupled with an uncanny resilience is what makes Nigeria a consistently interesting site of inquiry. How does this combination of factors and features within different historical moments and political situations play out against the ever-present backdrop of threats of disintegration on the one hand, and hope and resilience on 165

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the other? The figure of Abacha embodied the threat of disintegration just as the figure of Saro-Wiwa signified many other interesting possibilities. Minority rights and the problems of oil-producing communities have not yet been properly addressed. The clampdown an aggrieved oil producing communities continues unabated. Concepts such as human rights, freedom of expression and democracy are sometimes undermined, hence the continuing unrests in the Niger Delta. As often hinted, the crisis impinges upon the political future of the nation both in terms of determining the level of preparedness for the entrenchment of democracy or the degree of integrity and stability of its corporate unity. Bala Usman, a historian and trenchant social critic (until his demise in 2005), offered an unflattering critique of Nigeria’s political future in which he decried the policy of the military establishing or registering political parties. In other words, the ruling military elite had been trying to destroy the political class as well as abrogate civil liberties. This was the spectre that confronted Nigerians during the period of the military dictatorships. However, the key to a worthwhile democratic process, as Basil Davidson avers, lies …in devolving executive power to a multiplicity of locally representative bodies. It would be found in restablishing “vital inner links” within the fabric of society. Democratic participation would have to be “mass participation”. And “mass participation”, patiently evolved and applied, would be able to produce its own version of a strong state: the kind of state, in other words, that would be able to promote and protect civil society (1993:294-295).

In order to build a truly vibrant civil society, the Ogoni problem ought to provide the appropriate kind of lessons. But unfortunately this has not always been the case. If actual genocide had not fully been the government’s intention in dealing with the Ogoni question, then the political disenfranchisement and economic oppression meted out to the indigenes of Ogoniland betrayed a telling lack of sensitivity. Similarly, the ideological impoverishment on the part of the government and the political class was quite remarkable. The Ogoni crisis also showed grave failings of the Nigerian military adventure and displayed how anachronistic the political leadership was in relation with contemporary global political orientations. Undoubtedly, the Abacha regime was in various ways a victim of several years of 166

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militarism which would require a tremendous effort to dismantle as it pervades the entire Nigerian polity. When the Justice Amega-led UN team that addressed the Ogoni crisis finally submitted its report, the need to improve Nigeria’s human rights record became doubly apparent. Never before, in the history of the country, had there been such an intense international examination of its sociopolitical situation. The report did little to repair the government’s dented image. It faulted in its entirely the trial of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the eight other Ogoni indigenes. It was discovered that accepted international human rights standards were not met during the trials. According to the report: the composition of the special tribunal is not in conformity with the standard of impartiality and independence set out in applicable human rights law as found in the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (article 7 and article 26) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (article 14). The presence of a military officer on the tribunal is, in the view of the mission, contrary to these provisions (Tempo, May 30,1996).

In order to forestall further outbreaks of conflict within Ogoni territory and among other minorities, the report urged that a committee be constituted for the purpose of introducing peace in the socio-economic conditions of these communities and “enhancing employment opportunities, health, education and welfare services and to act as ombudsman in any complaints/allegations of harassment at the hands of the authorities” (ibid.). As this study has attempted to demonstrate, the spirit of the recommendation was not followed. Interestingly, the report also stressed the urgency of the demilitarisation of the Nigerian polity. In essence, the Abacha administration, like the one before it, showed no indications of being able to grapple with the crisis for several reasons; its entrenched authoritarian nature was contrary to the democratic ethos; there was also a lack of consistency in policy-making regarding oil-producing communities; the 1996 local government election demonstrated the difficulties of establishing democracy; the government’s oppressive attitude towards well-intentioned opposition forces, namely human rights activists, the press and politicians, indicated an inability on its part to conform with widely accepted democratic norms. If it did not plan systematic genocide, its neglect of, 167

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and insensitivity to, the plight of the indigenes of Ogoniland and other oil-producing communities has had almost genocidal consequences. Indeed the politics of oil exploration and consumption which has global dimensions is a far more devastating form of dispossession. The logic of technocratic capitalism is an impersonal kind of genocidal process that even Saro-Wiwa did not fully address. Thus, in order to understand the reaches of violence and oppression in relation to the Ogoni and in the Niger Delta generally, several levels of analysis involving critiques of multinational/technocratic capitalism together with actual and latent militarism within the Nigerian polity are required. Within the Nigerian context in particular, the problematic application of the concept of federalism is often perceived to be the cause of many problems. Accordingly, it has been argued that the misapplication of the concept within the polity by military regimes (particularly the 1976-79 Obasanjo admininstration) led to the drawbacks of over-centralisation (Ekeh, 1999). We also have to consider the issue of the continuing corporatisation of the state under conditions of global capitalism and what this entails in relation to the transmogrification of old notions of sovereignty, citizenship and accountability. Undoubtedly, internal squabbles, organisational differences within the leadership structure and fractionalisation enfeebled the Ogoni protest movement (Timothy-Hunt, 2005). Nonetheless, concepts such as human rights, environmental rights and consciousness, freedom of expression and democracy have gained wider political currency and much of this can be attributed to Ken Saro-Wiwa and other activists who have adopted his ideological orientations. The Ogoni protest movement placed a number of issues on the national agenda; minority rights, resource control and allocation, environmental awareness and the political stakes of self-determination. These issues are now being fervently contested even if the death of Saro-Wiwa has in some respects led to the criminalisation of certain aspects of the ethos of the movement by the aggrieved and dispossessed youth of the Niger Delta on the one hand, and the largely unrepentant Nigerian state on the other. In spite of its present limitations, the Ogoni protest movement, along with “Chiapas, Namada, Seattle, Cochabamba, Prague, Genoa and 15 February 2003” (Pithouse, 2004:174) has become an important landmark in the history of contemporary social struggles and movements. 168

Conclusion: Criminalisation and Dissent

At the global level, many developments have become more pronounced- or their contours have become more clearer- since the Ogoni sociopolitical struggle attained its peak. For instance, the epoch of thanotopolitics is more keenly perceived (Badiou, 2005); there has been a reconfiguration of the concept of sovereignty and its subsequent delegitimisation (Sassen, 1991, 1996, 2004); there has been a rise of various and sometimes competing fundamentalisms- rule of the market and religion- which have repositioned the friend/enemy dichotomy (Schmitt 1988; Agamben 1998, 2000,) along more opposed polarities; there has been the emergence of the age of network in which forms of terror (Al Qaeda) both increase and complicate the biopolitical violence of the state on its war on terror and on its quest for survellience, control and regulation (Baxi, 2005; Hardt and Negri, 2004); and finally, there have been reproblematisations of the notion of human rights (Baxi, 2006; Sands, 2006; Zizek, 2005). Many factors led to the emergence of the Ogoni crisis. The colonial legacy began a policy of marginalisation which successive military regimes adopted and extended. Ogoni nationalism emerged from this specific political context. This was a political context that favoured the excessive centralisation of power and which tended to exclude ethnic minorities and the political discourses that legitimate their rights. As the economic fortunes of the country worsened and oil became the only means of considerable governmental revenue, the agitations of the oil-producing communities increased and became more dangerous not only to national security but also global peace. The state could not find a credible strategy for the devolution of power and therefore resorted to the criminalisation of the agitations emerging from the Niger Delta. This basic structural explanation accounts for why movements such as MOSOP will continue to emerge from the Niger Delta and why the Ogoni crisis is symptomatic of the crises affecting oil-producing communities in particular and the Nigerian nation in general. These crises reflect the tensions inherent in the nation-building project in an age in which the state in being compelled to down-size even as security concerns and sociopolitical pressures continue to mount. The relationship between the state and the oil-producing communities wavers between the polarites of criminalisation and dissent. Conditions of existence in such communities are prone to criminalisation, discontent and dissent. Successive governments, on the other hand, adopt a discourse of diabolisation in relation to those 169

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communities when part of the solution lies in transforming the structure of the state. However, under the present circumstances, not only are those communities criminalised, the state itself gets criminalised by those who contest the obsoleteness of its postures and structures. A major suggestion this study makes is that the reasons for the Ogoni crisis and similar conflagrations in the Niger Delta can be found in the following configuration; the nature of the Nigerian federation and its capacities and/or inabilities for transformation, the dynamics, activities and reconfigurations of transnational petroleum concerns within both local and global contexts, the conditions of existence prevailing in the Niger Delta and the interplay of ethnicity, federalism and religion at both the grassroots level and on the national scene. The combination of these various factors (of course in addition to other factors) gave rise to the Ogoni protest movement and similar movements of resistance within the Niger Delta.

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188

Index Awolowo, Chief Obafemi, 16, 46, 47, 172 Azikwe, Nnamdi, 47

A Abacha, Sani, v, viii, ix, x, xiii, 16, 24, 36, 38, 48, 49, 50, 56, 103, 104, 106, 107, 108, 110, 111, 112, 113, 115, 121, 128, 130, 132, 133, 134, 137, 147, 148, 159, 160, 162, 166, 167, 184 Abiola.Alhaji M.K.O., v, 111, 112, 135, 179 Abubakar, Gen. Abdulsalami, 135 Aburi Accord, 53 Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), viii Achebe, Chinua, 137, 142, 171 Action Group, 24 African Charter on Human and Peoples, 167 African Democratic League (ADL, 35 African Studies Centre, Leiden, v Agip, vi Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, 17, 50 Ajuluchuku, M.C.K, 54 Akaluka, Gideon, 36, 37 Ake, Claude, 88, 89, 160, 161, 171 Al Qaeda, 169 Alafin of, 22 Algeria, 31, 39 Amnesty International, 88 Andoni River, 88 Angola, 39, 106 Antimodern, 32 Asaba, 53 Asiodu, Philip, 86 Association of Minority Oil Producing States, 116 Association of Nigerian Authors, 81, 162, 183 Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), 81

B Babangida, General Ibrahim, vii, ix, xiii, 34, 48, 49, 50, 73, 81, 82, 86, 89, 100, 102, 103, 104, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 115, 116, 128, 130, 131, 132, 134, 135, 140, 146, 147, 148, 160, 161, 164, 171 Bello, Sir Ahmadu, 23 Biafran war, 44 Biafrans, 72 Bond, Patrick, v, xiii, 66, 172, 173 Bosnia-Herzegovina, 27, 29, 30 Bretton Woods, ix, 140 British Colonial Office, 23 British Muslims, 29 Buhari, Muhammadu, 125, 135, 146, 148 Buhari-Idiagbon, 125 Burundi, 22, 39, 178, 179 C Central Ogoni Union, 74 Centre for Civil Society, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, v Centre for Democratic Studies (CDS), 110, 131 Chevron, vi Chikoko Movement, 77 Christendom, 27 Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), 36 Ciroma, Adamu, 111 Civil Liberties Organisation, 88, 119, 173, 180, 181 Clifford, Sir Hugh, 71 CNN, 86

189

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(EMIRON), 116 Ethnonationalism, 45, 55, 179 Ethnonationalism., 19

Code of Conduct Bureau., 131 Cold War, 32, 34 Committee of Northern Elders, 116 Committee of Peace and Unity, 116 Committee of Unity and Understanding, 116 Commonwealth Writers Prize, 81 Concerned Ogoni Leaders of Thought (COLT), xi Conference of Ogoni Traditional Rulers (COTRA), 87 Constitution and Modification Decree 107, 48 Constitutional Rights Project, 35 Council of Ogoni Churches (COC), 87

F Falana, Femi, 112, 161 Fatwa, 29 Fawehinmi,Gani, 112, 161 Federal Character Commission, 16, 17, 110 Federalism, ix, 49, 50, 52, 66, 175, 182, 183, 184, 186 Federation of Ogoni Women Associations (FOWA), 123 Federation of Ogoni Women’s Association (FOWA), 87 French Institute for Research in Africa, Ibadan, v

D Dasuki, Ibrahim, 35, 46 Davidson, Basil, 18, 19, 47, 50, 78, 166, 174 Democratisation, 48, 49, 73, 102, 103, 105, 108, 160 Dikko, Umaru, 111 Directorate for Social Mobilisation (MAMSER), 131 Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI), 133

G Genocide, 31, 93, 179, 180, 185 Gokana Women Forum, x Gowon, General Yakubu, vii, 43, 44, 45, 53, 54, 64, 72 H Hausa-Fulanis, 38, 40 Herault, Georges, v Hereros of German South West Africa, 31 Hutus, 152, 153

E Effiong, Lt Col Philip, 53 Egbe Omo Oduduwa, 24 Elaigwu, Jonah, 23, 43, 44, 91, 110, 175 Ethiopia, 137 Ethnic Minority Rights Organisation of Africa (EMIROAF), 85, 91, 116 Ethnic Minority Rights Organisation of Africa (EMIROAF)., 85 Ethnic Minority Rights Organization of Nigeria

I Ibadan, 38, 53, 56, 81, 171, 173, 174, 175, 179, 182, 183, 184, 187 Igbo, 22, 36, 37, 45, 46, 54, 55, 58, 71, 183 Ijaw Youth Council, 77 Imo River, 69 Interim National Government (ING), 132, 134 International Covenant on Civil

190

Index

Peninsula, 27

and Political Rights, 78, 167 Ironsi, Major-Genera Aguiyi, 43 Ironsi, Major-General Aguiyi, 42 Itsekiris, 115 Izon Peoples Charter, 77

N National Council for Intergovernmental Relations (NCIR)., 110 National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC), 24 National Defence and Security Council (NDSC), 35 National Democratic coalition (NADECO), 112 National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), 113 National Electoral Commission of Nigeria (NECON), 110 National Electric Power Authority (NEPA)., 140 National Party of Nigeria (NPN), 73 National Reconciliation Committee (NARECOM), 125 National Reconciliation Committee,, 110 National Republican Convention (NRC, 110, 115 National Union of Ogoni Students (NUOS), 87 Nationalist ideologies, 47 Nazi occupation, 27 Ndokwa, 115 Niger Delta, xi, xiii, 55, 64, 65, 66, 69, 70, 75, 76, 86, 87, 107, 114, 138, 141, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 153, 158, 159, 161, 162, 166, 168, 169, 170, 175, 179, 183, 184 Niger Delta Development Commission, 148 Nigerian Constitutional Conference, 74 Nigerian democracy, 105, 165 Nigerian ethnicity, 16

J Jaja of Opobo, 62 K Kalahari Desert, 153 Kataf, 34, 175 L Lekwot, Major-General Zamani, 34, 35, 36 Liberia, 19, 22, 39, 78, 106, 163, 165 Lugard, Lord Frederick, 20, 21 M Maitatsine riots, 37 Mamdani, Mahmood, xii, 22, 28, 31, 32, 33, 34, 152, 153, 180 Manufacturers’ Association of Nigeria (MAN), 41 Maoris of New Zealand, 31 Mbembe, Achille, xii, 19, 25, 47, 155, 156, 180, 181 Middle Belt Forum, 116 Military federalism, 44, 46, 49 Mohammed, General Murtala, vii Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP, xi Movement for the Survival of the Izon Ethnic Nationality (MOSIEND), 77 Movement of the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), 75 Mozambique, 39, 106 Muchie, Mammo, v, 60 Muslim Parliament in London, 27 Muslims from the Iberian

191

Sanya Osha

Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), 112 Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), 139 Nigerian sociopolitical life, 98, 151 Nnoli, Okwudiba, 18, 175, 182 Noma Award for Publishing in Africa, 81 Northern Nigeria, 20, 21, 22, 23, 36, 37 Northern Peoples Congress (NPC), 24

One Naira Survival Fund (ONOSUF), 86 Ooni of Ife, 22 Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), 30 Osha, Sanya, 48, 142, 183, 184 P Paris Club, vi Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP)., 134 Petroleum (Special) Task Force, 148 Pithouse, Richard, v, 168, 184 Pius Okigbo panel, 147 Political Bureau, 109, 131 Political Islam, 33 Port Harcourt, 66, 79, 86, 89, 90, 91, 93, 94, 95, 120, 124, 150, 171, 182, 185 Premodernity, 32, 33, 34

O Obasanjo, General Olusegun, vii, viii, xiii, 55, 72, 104, 111, 113, 125, 127, 134, 135, 141, 148, 164, 168, 175 Odua` Peoples Congress (OPC, 165 Ogoni Central Union (OCU)., 87 Ogoni crisis, vi, vii, viii, ix, x, xi, xiv, 40, 41, 62, 81, 89, 91, 120, 121, 125, 126, 144, 158, 159, 160, 166, 167, 169, 170 Ogoni Divisional Union, 75 Ogoni Nine, vi, vii, xi, 120, 121 Ogoni struggle, 80, 81, 82, 85, 121 Ogoni Students’ Union, 87 Ogoni Teachers Union, 87 Ogoni territory, 70, 72, 75, 76, 80, 84, 87, 89, 167 Ogoniland, vii, xi, 70, 74, 75, 76, 79, 85, 87, 92, 93, 95, 98, 113, 115, 118, 119, 121, 122, 123, 124, 144, 157, 158, 159, 166, 168 Oil Mineral Producing Areas Development Commission (OMPADEC),, 147 Oil-Mineral Producing Areas Development Commission (OMPADEC), 113 Ojukwu, Lt Col Emeka, 43, 44, 71 Okrika, 74, 89, 95

R Republic of Congo, 22, 127, 142, 187 Revenue Allocation Decree, 26 Rivers State, x, 34, 73, 75, 80, 81, 83, 85, 89, 90, 93, 94, 117, 118, 120, 121, 123, 124, 159, 171 Rushdie, Salman, 29 Rwanda, xi, 21, 39, 73, 106, 128, 152, 153, 178, 179, 187 S Saro-Wiwa, Ken, vi, x, xi, xii, xiii, 66, 69, 70, 71, 72, 74, 75, 76, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 84, 85, 86, 87, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 113, 114, 116, 117, 121, 145, 149, 151, 156, 161, 162, 166, 167, 168, 172, 181, 185 Shagari, Alhai Shehu, 73, 112, 114, 125

192

Index

Shagari, Alhaji Shehu, 73 Shell, vi, 64, 79, 83, 85, 87, 94, 96, 117, 144, 149, 150, 151, 159, 177, 182 Shell-BP, 80 Sierra-Leone, 39 Social Democratic Party (SDP), 110 Somalia, 39, 163 South Africa, vi, 20, 31, 39, 93, 104, 106, 128, 129, 149, 155, 172, 174, 176, 177, 184, 185, 186 Southern Nigeria, 20, 23 Southern Protectorates of Nigeria, 70 Soyinka, Wole, viii, 21, 35, 47, 62, 82, 112, 130, 137, 186 State Creation, Local Government and Boundary Adjustment Panel,, 110 States and Local Governments Creation and Boundary Adjustment Committee, 41

U Umahi, Major Obi, x, 121, 159 UN Safeguards Guaranteeing Protection of the Rights of Those Facing the Death Penalty, 78 Unitarianism, 42 United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations, 85 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 78 Universal Defenders of Democracy (UDD), 35 Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation (UNPO), 85 Urhobos, 115 Usman, Bala, 166 Y Yar’Adua, Alhaji Shehu Musa, viii, 111 Youths Association of Ogoni Oil Producing Communities (YAPCO), x

T The Nigerian Armed Forces, 98 Third World, 39, 174, 175, 177 Transition Implementation Committee (TIC, 110

Z Zaire, 39 Zangon-Kataf, 34, 36, 46

193