This week Nigeria's most notorious militant leader, Henry Okah, was released in an amnesty deal. Some hope it will bring peace to the restive Niger Delta. Waldimar Pelser spoke to Okah's wife in the couple's Johannesburg home.
WHEN two South African divers were kidnapped by a rebel group in Nigeria’s volatile Niger Delta last September, a phone call from Johannesburg helped to secure their release.
The call came from Azuka Okah, a 43-year-old mother of four. She is also the wife of Henry Okah, a leading militant in an oil war that has cost Nigeria’s government some $30 million (about R240 million) a day in lost production since 2006.
Behind bars on treason charges for the past 22 months, Okah (44) was released last Monday in an amnesty deal many hope will end a war waged chiefly by the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend), Nigeria’s most notorious rebel group.
Although he denies it, Henry Okah is believed to be Mend’s leader and in the past week Mend’s commander, “Boyloaf”, confirmed to AFP that Okah is their leader.
The group, which has stunned the world with its fiery attacks on oil pipelines and kidnapping of foreign oil workers since 2006, carried out its last attack as late as last Sunday night, blowing up an oil loading facility in Lagos harbour. It was its first attack in Nigeria’s biggest metropolis.
“The depot and loading tankers moored at the facility are currently on fire,” the group’s spokesperson, “Jomo Gbomo”, said in an email sent to City Press.
And yet a day later the phone in the Okah family’s home in Bassonia, in Jo’burg’s southern suburbs, and not far from where boxing great Baby Jake Matlala lives, was ringing off the hook with the amnesty news.
“Thank God for the amnesty,” Azuka Okah told City Press in a lounge adorned with family portraits at the couple’s plush house. Since relocating to South Africa with his family in 2004, Okah had bought property worth more than R10 million in Johannesburg and Pretoria, Beeld reported in May last year.
Until Monday Okah had been held in an underground cell with no windows, on 63 charges including sabotage, complicity in bank robberies, the hiring of mercenaries, sourcing of arms, acquisition of surface-to-air missiles, hostage taking and piracy. The charges were later reduced to three. On Monday they were dropped.
Okah, who has a kidney ailment, claimed that while he was in detention guards tried to poison his food and once released two poisonous snakes into his cell. In Johannesburg his wife was telling their children, Eniye (14), Tari (9), Ebimi (7) and Didi (6) their dad was “away on business”.
All four children go to Harvest Christian School and last saw their father when he left for Angola in August 2007.
“The kids are protected. They don’t know,” says their mother.
In Nigeria’s oil war, Okah has been dubbed a “guerilla entrepreneur” by the website Global Guerillas, and called the “master of arms” by Nigeria’s government.
His brother, Charles, has told the press that Henry started selling guns “door to door” in Nigeria soon after the execution of Delta activist Ken Saro Wiwa in 1995, which angered Okah as both his parents hail from the Delta’s Bayelsa state.
Azuka Okah says her husband got involved in the cause in the 1990s and has “always been concerned”. She never calls him Mend’s leader.
“It is more comfortable to say he is a sympathiser of the cause. As for being the leader, he is more of a networker,” she says.
“People associate Mend with militancy, but for my husband it is more than militancy. I know that the government has asked for his opinion and help, not just in the militant area but also about social issues and health.
“But because of the strong roots of militancy in Mend, and who my husband is, they do associate him with militancy.”
Mend is never far from the front pages and late night news. When US President Barack Obama visited Ghana last week the group cheered him for not choosing to visit “the failed state, Nigeria”. And in a June 13 press release Gbomo, who often chooses biblical language, warned the Nigerian government that “The mother of all plagues will be used as a last resort if the Nigerian pharaos show stubbornness”.
“Mend is not really so bad,” says Azuka Okah. “I think Mend can be approachable. For them to release the South Africans, I was touched.”
Many believe Gbomo is actually Okah himself or his wife, who calls Gbomo “JG” and admits, “It is not his real name”.
The Wall Street Journal has reported that Gbomo’s Yahoo email address was once traced to South Africa.
“I think JG is someone who is very focused, who does not get sidetracked by offers. He is somebody who wants to see results, someone I’ve come to respect. He has a heart as well. There’s no total monster here as far as I’m concerned,” she says.
Mend was quick to respond to Okah’s amnesty, calling a 60-day ceasefire two days after his release.
“Several factors necessitated our decision; chiefly the release of Mr Henry Okah from government custody,” Gbomo said.
Many believe Okah is key to peace in the Delta. In an April report, Brussels think- tank the International Crisis Group (ICG) urged Nigeria’s President Umaru Yar’Adua to follow the advice of a technical committee looking into the Delta crisis to grant “amnesty for leaders whose actions have been politically rather than criminally motivated, including the imprisoned leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, Henry Okah”.
If for Nigeria Okah’s release brings with it renewed hope for peace, to his wife it
brings hope that their children will soon be able to return to a more just Nigeria.
Many parts of the Delta still lack roads, schools and electricity, even though it is the source of all Nigeria’s wealth.
“If the government does it right I believe things will be different in the Delta,” she says, “but let’s see what comes out of the new offer. That’s what Henry is fighting for, anyway.”
Okah might be free but he’ll remain committed to the cause, says Azuka Okah.
“How he is going to be involved I don’t know, but I know Henry. I can’t tell him to take a break,” she says.
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