Some months ago, a reporter from Radio French
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 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
defenseless 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 in 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 on 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
favorites. 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 emergence. 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 has 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!”
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