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Jonathan Vs The Ogonis: The Jury Is Out By Toate Ganago

March 13, 2014

When Jonathan was elected (?) the President of Nigeria, as an Ogoni I thought that our water was going to be turned into wine. The reason is that Jonathan is from the Niger Delta and was familiar with the problem in the region. 

When Jonathan was elected (?) the President of Nigeria, as an Ogoni I thought that our water was going to be turned into wine. The reason is that Jonathan is from the Niger Delta and was familiar with the problem in the region. 

The Ogoni people had invested a lot of their stock in Nigeria without getting anything in return. This led Mosop under the leadership of Ken Saro Wiwa to launch a campaign against Shell and the Nigerian Government and despite sending them the Ogoni Bill of Rights which states the demands of the Ogoni people, nothing was done. The Ogoni Bills of Rights among many other things, asked for a fair share of the proceeds from oil for the development of Ogoni and also for representations of Ogoni sons and daughters into the Nigerian institutions.

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The Ogoni Bill of Rights was treated with disdain which threw the Ogoni people into a frenzy protest mode in 1993. More than 300,000 Ogonis came out and demonstrated against Shell and the Nigeria Government with glee.

From 1993 when Ogoni people demanded to be heard and treated right, the leadership of Mosop had been haunted and harassed without measure. The then maximum ruler, General Ibrahim Babangida in a way to silence the Ogoni leadership, initiated a bill that forbade any public gathering, which was termed Ken Saro Wiwa’s law. 

The Ogoni stuggle has reshaped Nigeria in ways unimaginable; the UMPADEC was established as a way to showcase to the world that the Ogoni people were being listened to. The irony was that this institution did not benefit the Ogoni like many others that would emerge thereafter. When UMPADEC became NDDC, Obasanjo said that the Ogoni people would not benefit from it because they have stopped their oil, not knowing that before the Ogoni oil was stopped the Ogoni had contributed a whopping $30 billion with interest to the upkeep of Nigeria.

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Ogoni is the only place that people are riding bicycles as means of transportation. Unemployment is rife in Ogoni. There is no federal presence in Ogoni, while Babangida was transferring the wealth from the Delta to other parts of the country, more so the Northern part. 80 percent of the oil blocks in the Niger Delta reside in the hands of Northerners.

Bayelsa was created when Mosop brought the awareness of the marginalization of the Niger Delta to the fore. Bayelsa was a part of River State until 1996. Bayelsa is the home of a civil war hero; Major Isaac Daka Boro fondly called Boro. Boro was a pioneer of the minority rights campaign in Nigeria. The fate that befell Boro was the fate that Ken Saro Wiwa was met with. Anyone could have thought that Oloibiri would be a town with beautiful scenery as the first place that oil was discovered in the Delta. Today it sits as a sad reminder of marginalization and exploitation of the minority tribes in Nigeria. And this is the Scenario that Ogoni would have to avoid at all cost.

There are lots of things that are ailing Nigeria and when President Jonathan became the president I had thought that at least the Ogoni and the entire Niger Delta would have every reason to smile but I was wrong. Ken Saro Wiwa with his omnipresent smile was killed by the Abacha junta for asking for a fair shake for the Ogoni and the Niger Delta. Jonathan of all people passed Ken Up and pardoned Gov. Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, a politician who embezzled millions from the Bayelsa state while serving as the Governor. Diepreye Alamieyeseigha was guilty and pleaded guilty to charges of corruption and impeached and Ken Saro Wiwa was innocent. This speaks for the type of Government that President Jonathan is running. Jonathan is cherry picking. Why can’t Ken Saro Wiwa and the rest of the Ogoni patriots be exonerated?

There are strews of evidences that Jonathan is not on the side of the Ogoni people. First, Jonathan promoted the judge who presided over the sham tribunal which tried Ken Saro Wiwa (Justice Ibrahim Auta) despite cries and protest from Ogonis against that. Also, the UNEP is another case that has been sitting on the conscience of the Ogoni people. Jonathan had busied himself with the amnesty and most of the boys in that program are millionaires: Asari Dokubo is today a millionaire who owns a university. The question is, is it the style? Violence is not in the DNA of the Ogoni people, and would not resort to that no matter the urge to do so.

My hunch is that if Yaradua had not ordered the UNEP to assess the damage done to Ogoni environment, Jonathan never would have done it. And more than two years after the UNEP report was released Jonathan had not lifted a finger to try to fix the environmental problems plaguing the Ogoni people. This vindicated the Ogoni people and Mosop: 300 oil spill sites in Ogoni to the extent that Ogoni people do not have clean water to drink. Yet to Jonathan that is nothing!

Jonathan is a beneficiary of the Ogoni struggle. When Obasanjo could not deal with the issues of the Niger Delta, he pushed it on Jonathan. There was nothing accidental about Jonathan’s ascension as the President of Nigeria. Jonathan’s presidency was a well-orchestrated plot to install a person from the Niger Delta to deal with the myriad of problems in the region. Not only has he been a disappoint to Ogoni people, but he had bit the fingers that fed him. Jonathan can’t tell the world that the reason he had not implemented the UNEP reports is that there is no money. Obasanjo knew quite well that the ailing Yaradua would not survive the rigors of a presidency and then positioned Jonathan for when that would happen.

While the Ogoni do not see Jonathan as their enemy, he is not their friend either. Jonathan does not care for the Ogoni people and while Jonathan is to blame, I am not sure where to put Oronto Douglas. Oronto Douglass defended Ken Saro Wiwa and I had thought that he would understand the plight of the Ogoni more than some outsiders and would whisper something to the President about the Ogoni people.

The last straw that made the Ogoni people to feel left out is the upcoming national conference. For any president or anyone to ignore the Ogoni people and any other minority group is taking a big risk that will explode in the face. Ogoni is a problem for the Nigeria Government and to ignore them and not invite them to the conference is a big letdown. The Ogoni people had sent delegates to the regional pre-conference before and stated their case. And the question is: at what time did the Government know that the Ogoni people were going to be left out of this? Even if nothing would come out of it the Ogoni people need to make known their grievances. As Jonathan looks to continue his presidency beyond 2015, I am not sure that if the Ogoni people are not called or included in the national talk shop they would not be too happy going to the polls to vote for him.

It’s no secret that President Jonathan is not that into the Ogoni people. We need to stop obsessing about him and move on for as far as I know, the jury is out on this. The stabbing is painful and letting Jonathan twist it again and again would be a painful reminder of our loss.


Toate Ganago is a Pastor from Ogoni. He can be contacted @ [email protected] and on twitter @ ToateG

 

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of SaharaReporters

 

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