Our driver reduced his speed and waved at them. The soldiers seemed to be more interested in their game than us. One of them, barked, “Go oooooo”, he motioned his right hands in our direction, but the driver didn’t hear him. A passenger said that they said we should go, and that the soldiers have asked us to do so. We navigated out, headed towards another creek course around the Sebediagbene community area. On the left was a fishing settlement, there were some thatched huts there. Smokes from mangrove wood fire which escaped from the fishing shanties formed a cloud on the roof tops. It was a sign that fisher folks were smoking the fish they had caught the night before. Fish traders would travel there to buy them and sell at high retail prices in several cities in Nigeria.
Just about a kilometre away we entered a creek. The whole area was quiet. Thick mangrove trees on the creek edge provided some warmth. The only noise I could hear was the sound of our weeping engine and chirruping river birds. We took a turn on the left and sailed on a path popularly called “pipeline”, which a network of pipelines has been buried in the womb of the creek and mudflats. At the end of the creek were four soldiers in uniform, sitting on a bench playing a game of draughts also known as checkers.
Our driver reduced his speed and waved at them. The soldiers seemed to be more interested in their game than us. One of them, barked, “Go oooooo”, he motioned his right hands in our direction, but the driver didn’t hear him. A passenger said that they said we should go, and that the soldiers have asked us to do so. We navigated out, headed towards another creek course around the Sebediagbene community area. On the left was a fishing settlement, there were some thatched huts there. Smokes from mangrove wood fire which escaped from the fishing shanties formed a cloud on the roof tops. It was a sign that fisher folks were smoking the fish they had caught the night before. Fish traders would travel there to buy them and sell at high retail prices in several cities in Nigeria.
We had travelled some minutes from the Sebediagbene creek and entered the Osungbo zone. At this creek, tall mangrove tress extended their branches towards the sky while others spread their leaves and roots into the creek routes. Around the Osungbo village there were block houses roofed with corrugated iron sheets. It looked different from the Sebediagbene fishing camp. The community overlooked the famous Escravos River. The Escravos is an estuarine which is a major link between fresh water and mild salt water creeks of Warri and the tidal, seemingly endless, salty Atlantic Ocean. In spite of that, the Escravos is salty. This route was a major trading channel between European traders and their Nigerian allies. Around this area too, was a huge vessel that was burnt around late two thousand and ten. The vessel was said to have siphoned crude oil from nearby pipelines and was racing into the river when operatives of the Joint Task Force (JTF) also called Operation Pulo Shield (OPS) intercepted it, and burnt it with the crude oil it was carrying. The burning further despoiled the aquatic ecosystem. Some parts of the nearby mangrove tress were burnt too. Operators of the vessel were also arrested. The wreckages of the vessel are still there, and the environment has not recovered either.
The weather was dull – no sun, no rain. We diverted through Kokiri, a fishing camp route before entering the Escravos River. The whole place was still and smell of crude oil. Blotches of crude were seen flowing on the water surface. The Escravos River appeared violent ahead. From my seat in the boat, I shot my eyes like an arrow into the river, and saw swells of fuming waves rioting round. My anxiety about not having a life jacket increased. The boat driver vied through into the middle of the river and the boat rocked. I asked the boat driver to sail along shoreline, but he laughed and said it was God who is driving the boat. I kept quiet.
I saw another speed boat zipped pass us with four young men in it, none of them had life jacket on. There were also five teenagers – two boys and three girls in a dug-out canoe they were padding their canoe across the river flow to their Egwu village community. We stopped at Egwu, an Ijaw village to drop a passenger at a jetty. I saw crude oil particles flowing around again. Under the Egwu jetty was a small bird resting on a small piece of wood. The bird refused to fly away in spite of our presence. A speed boat with two under-aged boys had broken down there. An old woman was deploying her net in the crude oil polluted Egwu creek with her small canoe by the side.
I was raised in a waterfront community in the eastern Niger Delta region of Nigeria. I have undertaken all sorts of fishing expeditions across the violent rivers and creeks across the region as a boy. I can swim, but I am no longer young. My muscles are becoming weak and grey hairs spread over my head and cheeks like the rolling waves of the Escravos estuary. From the Egwu area, the driver increased the speed of his engine to cross the windy Escravos River into the Okerenkoko community. Passengers who were discussing noisily suddenly stopped talking. They were afraid of the fierce river. The Escravos wind slapped my ears and eyes and spread cold over my body. It awakened me to be more alert and vigilant. A plump man, probably in his late fifties who sat on same row with me who was discussing with me was visibly more frightened. He started saying certain things in low tones. I guessed he was praying or chanting something for his protection against the waves. His accent suggested that he was an Igbo from the south-eastern Nigeria. I tried to talk to him as we sailed, but he refused to say anything to me. His mind was more on the waves than any discussion.
Around twelve p.m. we had crossed successfully into the Okerenkoko territory. The man dropped off at the proposedsite of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA)’s shipyard/dockyard where construction was going on. He had told me that he works there. He looked at me, waved his hand while smiling cordially as he stepped out of the boat and said, “My friend, safe journey, God be with you”. I reciprocated by waving back at him, and smiled, but didn’t utter any word. Okerenko is also hosting the permanent site of the NIMASA’s Nigeria Maritime University. The father of Government Ekpemupolo, commonly called “Tompolo” or “GOC”(General Officer Commanding) by his followers and admirers, hails from both Okerenkoko and Kurutie communities in the Gbaramatu kingdom. Tompolo’s late mother’s parents came from Ogulagha in the Burutu LGA and Kokodiagbene in the Gbaramatu kingdom respectively. The tidal Escravos Rivers divides both communities (Okerenkoko and Kurutie). It takes about ten minutes or less in a speed boat ride from Okerenkoko to Kurutie.
Tompolo is forty-six-year-old. He was ex-director of Mobilization of the Federated Niger Delta Ijaw communities (FNDIC) and ex-commander of the movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND). GOC was instrumental to the appointment of Patrick Ziakede Akpoblokemi, the current Director-General of NIMASA. Patrick comes from the Ijaw village of Okoloba in the Bomadi LGA. I had met him around December, nineteen ninety-six in the houseof Felix Tuodolo in the D/Line area of Port Harcourt, Rivers State capital .Tuodolo, a frontline Ijaw activist who is now the Bayelsa State Commissioner for Ijaw Affairs and Culture is from same Bomadi area with him. I met Patrick when it was just less than two weeks after, I and Uche Okwukwu, the well-known Port Harcourt lawyer, now a politician were released from a horrifying detention cell in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State capital during the fascist regime of General Sani Abacha. Operatives of the State Security Services (SSS), Nigeria’s secret police stormed the Uyo central motor park and abducted two of us from a commercial bus there. We were travelling to Calabar, the Cross River State capital.
They alleged that my ‘crime’ especially, was that I had written libellous and uttered seditious things; with the intent of bringing down the regime and that they were looking for me for a long time. They threatened to kill me if I don’t stop my pro-democracy activities. In spite of that threat, after my release, I continued with those ‘libellous’ and ‘seditious’ deeds until the regime collapsed later and the transition to civil rule began. Akpoblokemi and I were quite close up to the late nineteen nineties when the Kaiama Declaration of the Ijaw Youth Council (IYC) was launched in Kaiama in the Kolokuma Opokuma LGA of Bayelsa state. Kaiama is the home of Major Isaac Jasper Adaka Boro, the legendary student leader/activist and Ijaw revolutionary. I was one of the moving spirits of that declaration.
Okerenkoko which sits on the coastline of the Escravos River is a place I have visited severally. Around fifteen January 2009, I had spent few days wandering around the Western Niger Delta Creeks. I was doing my usual voyage. When I got to my hotel room in Warri and opened my email then, [email protected] . This email was hacked few years after and I have abandoned it. The email was from a then new group. The mail was entitled “Press Release-Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta; Freedom At Last for the Hostages” The press release opened with a quote from
James Knox Polk, born on second November seventeen ninety-five and died on fifteen June, eighteen forty-nine. Polk was the eleventh president of the United States of America (USA), an orator, ex-militia fighter (Tennessee militia) and military strategist.
The MEND statement read in part, “On the 11th of January, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, now known as MEND to all and sundry, actually stung the world of oil politics and economics, when in our service to the humanity of the izon ethnic nationality and the estranged Niger Delta child, decided to chance the swords of horrid fate bounding our struggle for self-realization by evolving the resurrection of the rubbles of a rebellion to re-enact the birth rights of our stolen heritage…” The mail was sent from this email – [email protected]. It was signed by “General” Brutus Ebipade.
Jomo Gbomo later replaced General Brutus Ebipade as the MEND spokesperson, and used a different email address where statements from it were posted to local and International news agencies and organizations. Okerenkoko, like other communities in the region, became a theatre of war between soldiers of the Joint Task Force (JTF) and daring MEND combatants. Four days after the formation of MEND, Okerenkoko witnessed series of attacks and air bombardment to dislodge its fighters. The violence continued until fifteen May, Two Thousand and Nine when a major attack on the community took place. Two days before, JTF soldiers escorting oil equipment along the Escravos River were reportedly attacked by MEND fighters under Tompolo command. A major confrontation ensued. Some soldiers and MEND fighters were killed. Soldiers launched deadly air, water and land attacks throughout the Gbaramatu Kingdom. Major General Sarkin Bello, the then JTF commander then declared him (Tompolo) wanted.
In late June 2009, I attempted to visit Okerenkoko but the military refused to allow me to enter there. I was doing some documentation for the Centre for Environment, Human Rights and Development (CEHRD). CEHRD is an organization I founded in late Nineteen Ninety Nine, but left it years after. The group is one of the few serious groups in the region doing some good work. I was its Coordinator then and we got some small grants from the Washington-based National Endowment for Democracy (NED) to document and report incidents of abuses and violence in the region. Finally, on the second and third of March, Two Thousand and Ten (ten months after), I visited Okerenkoko, Oporoza and other places attacked in the Gbaramatu kingdom with Joseph Croft and Michael Uwemedimo. Croft is a Briton and the Director of the London-based Stakeholder Democracy Network (SDN). SDN also has a country office in Port Harcourt.
Naagbanton lives in Port Harcourt, Rivers State
To be continued.