Amaechi Ugwele wrote: THE MEN JONATHANS PEOPLE ARE SUPPORTING I have lived long here in the Niger Delta to know their current idiosyncrasies. Today they are somehow at the bus stop. But lately they have known how to be busy quarreling to realize the bus they were supposed to board to Eldorado had long arrived and are about departed empty. We the Igbo used to be that foolish. We now know better. We can never be deceived again by the Hausa Fulani. Never again would a Jim Nwobodo go to Jos and speak Hausa against an Alex Ekwueme! And that is why Rochas will pay dearly for aligning himself with our chief exterminators! That is also why every Igbo man sees through the current antics of the North in making the country ungovernable for Jonathan for truly what it is and gives him his total support. This is Nigeria for Gods sake where opportunities, be it political or economic, for non Notherners come but once. This is about Niger Delta, a minority area for crying out loud that is feeding this country but is having the Presidency everybody from here is not coming out to defend amidst a growing plot to oust him. I say this from the prism of patronage that goes with that office the North had for eon appropriated and passed on like a relay batton during the military era. For instance, how many big businesses in Niger Delta, those ones that deal with big government concerns, are owned by natives. Atiku during the last election prided himself as the biggest employer of labour in the Niger Delta in owning Intels. Right. What did he do to acquire nearly the whole navigable shoreline in eastern Rivers State? Nothing apart from belonging to the Northern power elite! Shehu Ya Aradua, the elder brother of the late President Umar Yar Adua, who was Obasanjos military deputy Head of State used state powers to acquire that area that traverse Ogu through Onne to nearly Eastern Obolo, for his company Nicotes. Abacha used his Presidential powers to seize Nicotes when they quarreled over who should lead Nigeria. During that struggle, it was purely a Northern affair as every credible contestant outside the zone had been emasculated including Abiola who died in the hands of Abdulsalam government. But earlier before God intervened and Abacha himself died, he had put his formidable adversary, Yar Adua in jail where he had orchestrated his death. Atiku became the biggest beneficiary of Nicotes as he took over and changed it to Intels which later as a Vice President he used his official position when he supervised privatizations to concession Onne ports to. Meanwhile, he made his money as a senior Custom Officer serving mostly in the lucrative commands in the South, including the Niger Delta seaports. Now in all of these, where people that are born and bred in the featureless and empty deserts of the North come down South, in the very backwaters of the Niger Delta, backed by federal might they controlled, and corner every lucrative oil business, where does it leave Niger Delta and her people? Of the hundreds of the oil blocs in the Niger Delta, how many belongs to an Ogoni man, Ijaw man, or any of Amaechis Ikwere kinsmen? The one Dan Etete a Niger Delta man got as an oil minister to Abacha, they accused him of corruption, drove him away into perpetual exile and have been battling to recover it from those he sold it to. Babangida accused David West of taking a bribe of a wrist watch and a cup of tea and jailed him as an oil minister from the Niger Delta, for daring to do the right things which was not in the interest of the power elite of the North. Abacha ruthlessly set the Ogoni elite against themselves and finally hanged Sarowiwa and eight others after four others had been killed, for daring to assert the Ogoni right to a clean environment in the wake of devastation by oil explorations that little benefit the locals. Danjuma got an oil bloc and sold it for billions of Naira and said he had to donate over a hundred million to charity since he had more than he needed. Non of the beneficiaries came from Niger Delta. I am an Igbo man but I am lamenting for Niger Delta, especially for allowing some people to be misleading them; making them not see they are not supposed to use spittle to wash hands since God in His wisdom placed them by the sea! It pains me that one who God has made a landlord wishes to be a tenant in his own land. Each time I see the youths of Niger Delta roaming from one company to the other in the area (of course majority are owned by non Niger Delta people) barricading their gates and going away with pittance, or going to markets like Oil Mill to harass poor Igbo traders who have long realized to pursue their own survival their own way in the markets, selling N20 tickets, while the Children of Ahmadu Alli, Bamanga Tukur etc are going home with N20 billion from oil exploited from Niger Delta in the name of subsidy, I never stopped wondering whether they will ever wear their hats right and think well. Now that God made Jonathan, against the wish of the North, the President, is there any worse folly than anyone from the Niger Delta to undermine him for whatever reason? How would such people persuade Harold Dappa Biriye, Ken Saro Wiwa, etc, to continue to rest in peace, that they are upholding the very ideals for which they struggled and paid the supreme price? How truly better can Isaac Adaka Boro, whose remains was recently brought from Lagos and reburied in Heroes Cemetery in Yenagoa rest when his people are fighting hard to truncate what he gave his life for and yet his people never got it until this Gods appointed time? Finally, let me leave you by saying this: whether or not Jonathan rules for a second term, no Niger Delta person alive today will be around to witness another Niger Delta presidency. It is not a course. It is the reality of the odds you beat to get what many of you seem not to appreciate. So today you found yourself on top of the Iroko tree, if you like, harvest all the faggots. But if you wish the North should rather have it all, yet again, well, its a pity. For the Igbo, we know what we want today. We must get it. And yes, we can fight again, but never again among ourselves! A true fool does not know he does not know.
Posted on: Sat, 07 Jun 2014 04:47:40 +0000
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