The campaign against the corporate existence of the Nigerian nation-state, whether in the name of restructuring, confederation, or, secession, is marked by a refusal to address the issue of the geographical compactness and interdependence of Nigeria, as brought out by Ajayi and Alagoa, and many others. In fact as the available literature, brings out clearly, Nigeria is not geologically divided between the North and the South, howsoever, defined. It is divided between the areas of basement complex rock and sedimentary rocks, which do not fall into any North-South division. The Lake Chad Basin, the Sokoto-Rima Basin, the Niger-Benue Basin, the Niger Delta, the Benin-Lagos Coastlands and the Cross River Basin, have more in common with one another geologically, being both made up of sedimentary rocks, as distinct from the Plains of Hausland, the Jos Plateau and the Central Nigerian Uplands, the Yoruba Uplands, the Adamawa and Mandara Mountains, which are made up of the basement complex, and volcanic material. So, where is this distinctive North and a distinctive South of Nigeria, in terms of the geological basis of the country, which is the foundation on which the soil, the mineral and the water resources, essential for human survival and human development, rest?
The geological base of the whole economy of Lagos, Edo, Delta, Anambra Enugu, Imo, Ebonyi, Abia, Rivers, Bayelsa, Cross River and Akwa Ibom states, is much more similar to that of Sokoto, Kebbi, Niger, Borno and Yobe, then any of these are to the geological bases of Oyo, Oshun, Ekiti, Katsina, Kano and Plateau, for example. So where is this North, and where is this South, in, terms of Nigerian geology and natural resource endowment arising from soil types, minerals and water supply? But even the sedimentary, formations, covering just over 70% of the country, are made up of rocks formed at widely different periods, from the Albian-Cenomanian, about 120 million years ago, to the Holocenle, only about one million years ago. This gives them different characteristic as far as the mineral resources in them, their soils, and hydrology, are concerned. It is this mosaic plurality of the physical realities of Nigeria, which the North-South dichotomy and that whole outlook derived from it, seeks to deny and to cover-up. But even more significantly, when we closely look at the geology of Nigeria, together with its hydrology, in the map of Nigeria’s geographical distribution on topography and ecology, we realize how closely integrated the river system of the country is; with the Niger-Benue and their tributaries and their watersheds providing the cohesive axis. The fact is that the geology of Nigeria has made its soils, its minerals, fauna and flora and the basic conditions of existence of its people interdependent and inseparable. This did not come about as a result of the amalgamation of 1914. It goes back hundreds of thousands, and millions, of years.
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One of the best examples of the high degree of interdependence between various parts of Nigeria is the geological and hydrological processes of the formation of the Niger Delta and all its soil, water and mineral resources. Far from the Niger Delta being a separate and distinct part of Nigeria, it is not only the most recently formed part of the country, but it has been formed, and is still being formed, by the soil, vegetation, and other organic matter, which the Rivers Niger and Benue, and their tributaries, carry from all over Nigeria and parts of West and Central Africa, and deposit to create the delta where the Niger enters the Atlantic Ocean. Alagoa has put it succinctly, in his pioneering study, History of the Niger Delta, published in 1972. He said: "The Niger Delta has been built up over ten thousand years from sediments brought down by the Rivers Niger and Benue." (p11). The geological process of the formation of the Niger Delta and of the crude oil and natural gas formed in some of its sedimentary formations actually goes much further back than ten thousand years. But the reality, which those who are using the issue of the federal control of the petroleum resources found in all parts of Nigeria, including in the Niger Delta, to attack the basis of the cooperate existence of Nigeria, do not want to accept, is that these sediments with which, and in which, this petroleum deposits are found, did not drop from the sky. These sediments are made up of soil containing vegetable, and other organic materials, including human, and animal, feces and remains, which were washed away from farmland, pasture and forests all over Nigeria and outside and carried by the Niger to form its delta and all the minerals in it. According to the NEDECO study of the Niger and Benue, of 1959, the Niger and the Benue drain the waters from 60% of the surface area of Nigeria. They also drain large parts of West Africa and the Cameroons. It is from these areas that the organic and inorganic matter is carried away down the tributaries and main channel of the Niger to form the Niger Delta and all the crude oil, natural gas and other minerals in it. This draining away of material to the delta takes place every rainy season, every year, for millennia, up to today.
If other Nigerians, are to resort to the narrow and parochial outlook of those claiming exclusive ownership of the land of the Niger Delta and its mineral resources, against the rest of Nigeria, they could say that, what some people in the Niger Delta are claiming as exclusively their own, has been made, and is being made, from the deprivation of their farmlands, forests and pastures of useful organic and inorganic material by the Niger and its tributaries, all over the 554,226 sq km. of Nigeria, which they drain, and this has gone on for millennia and is going on today. In line with this parochialism, it can be demanded, aggressively too, that the basis of the distribution of the revenue in the Federation Account should be changed, in the light of the fact that the organic and inorganic mater, which are the raw material from which crude oil and natural gas are made in the Niger Delta, and its hinterland, are derived from other states of Nigeria, upstream in the Niger-Benue basin. Therefore, these states, covering 60% of the Nigerian area, should be regarded as the primary oil-producing states, producing the primary raw material for the making of crude oil and gas; and the states where the oil is now extracted become the secondary oil-producing states. This raw material, with which the crude oil is made, is eroded away from the farmlands, pastures and forests, of these upstream states, which as a result, annually, lose their fertile top soils making them, suffer from annual ecological degradation and agricultural retardation.
If everybody should take exclusive membership and control of the natural resources in their area, as those attacking the corporate existence of Nigeria are demanding, then those states of Nigeria, upstream from the delta, in the Niger-Benue basin, should take exclusive ownership and control of the river water and its sediments drained away from them to form the delta and its hinterland, and demand their share from the returns from the export of crude oil and gas in proportion to what their vegetation, feces, dead bodies, animal remains and fertile soil, generally contributed to the making of these minerals for hundreds of thousands, and even millions, of years. This massive amount of sediment is from its vast drainage area covering most of Nigeria and beyond, and a substantial portion of this went to the Niger Delta and the immediate coastline behind it, and still does so today. But, this fact about the formation of the Niger Delta, applies equally to other parts of the Niger-Benue Basin, the Lake Chad Basin, the Cross River Basin, and all the other basins and coastal plains in Nigeria. The sediments, which have been, and are still being, deposited to form them, are organic and inorganic matter carried from other parts of Nigeria, West and Central Africa. They are not dropped from the sky as a special gift of the Creator to the people who happen to inhabit these places now. They are products of geographical processes, which, in concrete physical terms, have inter-locked the people of Nigeria and neighboring areas of Africa with one another, at very fundamental levels of their existence. The hydrological realities of the processes of the formation of the Niger Delta reveal how shallow and short-sighted, those riding on the real sufferings, and genuine grievances, of the Nigerian citizens inhabiting the Niger Delta are, when they use these to attack the basis of the corporate existence of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
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All these definite and specific realities of Nigerian geography are denied and covered-up and the fallacious notion is disseminated that the modern ethnic groups of Nigeria, like the Ogoni, the Ijaw and the Urhobo, have some autochthonous sovereign rights over the land and minerals of the Niger Delta and its coastal hinterland; and these rights are illegitimately being denied by the Federal Republic of Nigeria. This is a complete misrepresentation of the actual situation. Whatever sovereign rights the governments of the pre-colonial polities of the Niger Delta and its hinterland had, over the soil, water, and minerals of the area, were destroyed by the British conquest. This conquest was not largely the result of British military superiority, real as that was. It was also very much the result of the conflicts tearing apart the societies of most of these polities, their high level of fragmentation, and the economic backwardness, which their role as middlemen in the Atlantic slave trade had inflicted on them. This serious internal weakness which the British took advantage of to conquer the area, was brought out, in the case of the Ogoni polities by the late Ken Saro Wiwa, in his book, Genocide in Nigeria: The Ogoni Tragedy, published in 1992, in which he said: ‘…in the latter half of the nineteenth century internecine war became the order of the day. By 1900 these wars had virtually destroyed the fabric of Ogoni society and the Ogonis were forced to live in independent village’s (p.14). The British did not conquer the pre-colonial polities of Nigeria only to leave alone their land and minerals. They took full control over these, as the sovereign power, starting with the Niger Lands Transfer Act no.2 of 1902 and with Native Rights Act of 1916, whose section 3, provided that: "All native lands and all rights of the same are hereby declared to be under the control and subject to the disposition of the Governor." This was enacted together with the Minerals Act of 1916, whose section 3, unequivocally provided that: "The entire property and control of all minerals and mineral oils, under, or, upon any land in Nigeria, and all rivers, streams and water courses throughout Nigeria is and shall be vested in the Crown."
These sovereign rights, which the British seized and made all of us colonial subjects, were only recovered with the independence struggle, conducted, not by ethnic, or, religious group, but by Nigerian nationalist organizations like the Nigerian Trade Union Congress, the Nigerian Union of Student and the NCNC. The wining of the independence was part of a world-wide movement for national liberation, in the context of the victories of which, we ceased to be colonial subjects and became Nigerian citizens. Moreover, the constitutional conferences at which the constitutional arrangements for decolonization were worked out, were conferences between the British and delegates representing, not any ethnic, or, religious community, but Nigerian political parties, which, even when they were regional, or, local in scope, attended these conferences as part of national alliances. On 1st October, 1960, the sovereign rights seized by the British were recovered by the government of the Federation of Nigeria on behalf of the people of Nigeria, and not on behalf any ethnic, or, religious community. The actual realities of geological and hydrological interdependence of the people of Nigeria, which the formation of the Niger Delta is a very good example of, provided the solid hard ground on which this national sovereignty is rooted. These realities are very much stronger than the racist and tribalist onslaught on this sovereignty once they are recognized and built upon.
MUKHTAR KABIR USMAN ([email protected])
IS A PhD FELLOW AND WROTE IN FROM UNIVERSITI
ANTRBANGSA ISLAM, KUALA LUMPUR
REPUBLIC OF MALAYSIA
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