Tuesday,
June 26, 2007
Some months ago, a reporter from Radio France International called to interview
me. His question was, what did I think about the detention of two major espousers
of separatism — Ralph Uwazurike of the Movement for the Actualization of
the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) and Asari Dokubo, a key figure in the Niger
Delta struggle. I responded that the wrong persons were in the dock. If anybody
deserved to be held responsible for the rise of separatist sentiments in the country,
that person, I suggested, was then president Olusegun Obasanjo.
Today, I hold
that view with even greater conviction.
On June 14, a measure of justice
was served when Asari Dokubo was released on bail. He returned to Port-Harcourt
to a welcome worthy of a hero. He has since been garlanded with two chieftaincy
titles and feted wherever he’s gone in the Niger Delta. Deplore or like
him, Asari Dokubo is undeniably popular. His advocacy, if not his method, resonates
in his home base and even beyond. His argument, simply, is that the people of
the oil-rich Niger Delta deserve greater control of the resource. He and other
militant elements in the area have combined armed attacks with a savvy propaganda
campaign to give teeth to that demand. Their war has been unconventional in the
main, but it has got the attention of the Federal government, the oil companies
and the international media.
Uwazurike and MASSOB also enjoy great popularity
among the Igbo. On at least two occasions, MASSOB demonstrated its reach and the
appeal of its mission by shutting down most economic activities in the Southeast.
The movement proved that when it spoke, the people listened and hearkened.
Even
though the word Biafra evokes images of bloodbath, MASSOB officially disavows
violence. Even so, Obasanjo — who has promoted the fiction of being the
squelcher of Biafra — saw fit to resort to violence towards MASSOB. Last
year, Nigerian soldiers carried out an orgy of decimation in the name of engaging
MASSOB operatives. While the assault has gone largely unreported in the Nigerian
press, the horrific images of slain civilians were widely circulated on the Internet.
Obasanjo’s regime was not wholly content to savage defenceless and
unarmed civilians. It picked up Uwazurike on charges that remain nebulous. The
government seemed persuaded by the logic that Uwazurike’s detention would
suffice to incapacitate MASSOB. This has proved a miscalculation. Even with their
leader out of commission, the organization retains a large measure of populist
appeal.
It baffles me that Uwazurike still languishes in detention. His
continued incarceration is the equivalent of a crime perpetrated by the state.
A state that must bring a man like Uwazurike brutally to heel is not worth the
paper on which its Constitution is written. What kind of polity is Nigeria when
it’s so rankled by separatist rhetoric it feels compelled to crush the likes
of Asari Dokubo and Uwazurike?
Obasanjo’s violent response to activists
like Uwazurike was at once unintelligent and perversely predictable. That policy
was shortsighted, hypocritical and counterproductive. It ought to be abandoned.
Asari Dokubo is a product of the economic injustices meted out to those
whose lives have been devastated by Nigeria’s dependence on petrodollars.
He is one of the young men whose lives have been deformed by the intersection
of corporate arrogance on the part of oil companies and the greed as well as corruption
of Nigeria’s small ruling elite. Asari Dokubo would have had little or no
political profile if the Niger Delta had not been turned into a terrain of misery,
hopelessness and bleakness. If those seduced by his message had not been reduced
to destitution, they certainly would not have had use for him.
But those
who bear the brunt of oil exploration saw Obasanjo play Santa Claus with the resource
beneath their feet—or underneath their waters. They watched, outraged, as
oil blocks were handed out to the president’s cronies, domestic and foreign.
Their soil sodden with crude and their marines coated with films of oil, they
have witnessed the destruction of their means of livelihood. Their pauperization
bears a direct relationship with the obscene enrichment of a few. They have no
hospitals, but they knew that top government officials routinely flew to Europe
or North America for medical check-ups. They have no jobs, but they read about
the former president’s appetite for newer private jets and swankier helicopters.
Being no fools, they recognized an incongruity in their lives.
They reckoned
that their misfortune was sired by the (unearned) fortune of Obasanjo’s
small circle of favourites. That’s why many in the Niger Delta, including
illiterates, are able to comprehend the language of resource control. That’s
why Asari Dokubo was able to stir something within them.
Ditto for Uwazurike.
If his call for the resurrection of Biafra has found an attentive audience, it
is precisely because the Nigerian state has shirked its responsibility for meeting
its minimum obligations.
The people of the Southeast looked at the ghastly
shape of their roads, roads that the Federal government should long have repaired.
They felt a deep disgust. They were aware of Obasanjo’s coziness with bad
men whose patent was to make the lives of their fellows brutish, nasty and short,
and they dreamed of a better place.
They watched helplessly as hired thugs
traversed the state in scores of trucks and for three days, scorched government
property. They saw that the police stood on the sidelines, like cheerleaders,
as the arsonists carried on their fiery business. They knew those who conceived
and unleashed the mayhem wished to trigger widespread violence. They knew that
the intent was to create enough chaos to enable the president to declare a state
of emergency. They saw that nobody, not a single criminal or sponsor, was ever
brought to trial to answer for this impunity. They felt certain that the president—a
man sworn to the maintenance of law and order within the polity—was complicit
in this cruel visitation.
Should anybody be surprised that such a people
responded to Uwazurike’s call to renounce a nation founded on callousness
and to plant its dreams in a different garden? Should a man like Uwazurike be
crucified merely for denouncing a nation that hands him a stone when he asks for
bread, gives him a viper when he pleads for fish?
Last week, the Action
Congress added its voice to the growing number of calls for Uwazurike’s
release from detention. As far as I am concerned, a regime that epitomized lawlessness
had no moral authority to arrest Uwazurike in the first place. He is, above all,
a victim of human rights abuse, one of the many who suffered under the Obasanjo
dispensation.
Asari Dokubo has accused Obasanjo of “high-scale corruption”
and human rights violations. He has also vowed to ensure that the ex-president
is brought to trial. You won’t find too many Nigerians who disagree with
Dokubo’s characterization. It’s been less than a month since Obasanjo
left office, but already the facile propaganda of his so-called great reformist
achievements appears spent.
Not even Obasanjo's most shameless promoters
have had the temerity to proclaim him “founder of modern Nigeria.”
Instead, the final word on his legacy may belong to men like Asari Dokubo and
Uwazurike. “Known criminals were in his government,” Dokubo stated
last week. “Known criminals were his closest associates. I have made a contract
with my God that I will fight General Obasanjo until he is brought to justice.”
I can almost hear Uwazurike exclaiming, “Amen!” to that.