By Zik Gbemre
Some reactions trailing the reported death of two leaders of Okuama community in military detention and the fear for the lives of four others still being held, unlawfully, expose the worsening institutional failures and inter ethnic disharmony in the Niger Delta.
The utterances we have read or heard from the Delta State Government and the Pan Niger Delta Elders Forum (PANDEF) in last couple of days have been, to say the least, appalling, very shameful and inciting.
Where key stakeholders who should stand in the gap to call to order the federal government and the Nigerian Army in their willful abuse of state power against the right to life of Okuama people rather chose to talk as spectators or nominal respondents, so unfeeling over such a critical issue, then we have a real situation in the region.
Like we have always maintained, there was no justification and there will never be, for the March killing of 17 soldiers in Okuama, Ughelli South LGA of Delta state. But we have equally maintained that such statement of fact cannot also becloud the corresponding fact that the killing of soldiers was most avoidable and self inflicted.
The Army who met their unfortunate death in Okuama were mobilised from oil and gas fields where they served as military guards securing various assets in different beats in Utorogu Gas Plant. Okuama was no where near their beats. Many in the rank and file weren’t aware of the offbeat mission they were drawn into.
They claimed they were in Okuama for a ‘peace mission’ that remains doubtful till today. It was not their place to usurp the duty of the Nigerian Police with statutory role to keep internal peace. The universal rule of engagement dictates military only intervenes on internal peace when the police is seen to have been overwhelmed.
In this instance the Police never admitted being overwhelmed. Assuming police were overwhelmed, military guards watching over oil assets could not have invaded Okuama in territorial boundary dispute with neighboring Okoloba of Bomadi LGA with the Delta State Governor, Sheriff Oborevwori and Delta State Police Command not informed.
Governor Sheriff Oborevwori as Chief Security Office of the state and the Commissioner of Police admitted they were not informed of the doubtful peace mission. Both key stakeholders only heard of the military meddling in the communal crisis in the media like everyone else after the fatal backlash on the Army.
Since then, the world has been watching the vengeful extrajudicial mission by the military to push Okuama into extinction by sheer abuse of state power. First they invaded Okuama, burnt and level the community, leaving yet unconfirmed number of persons dead as displaced survivors ran for their lives into the swamps to live in hiding with wild animals and reptiles.
The collosal loss suffered by Okuama in the Army’s revenge mission came even as the Army admitted by their own intelligence gathering and investigations that the mastermind and prime suspect of the killing of soldiers in Okuama was an Ijaw militant who took advantage of the reckless Army ‘peace mission’ to attack them in perceived anger over the military disruption of his oil theft escapades.
Aside invading and vandalising his Bayelsa state home, since March, the Army that admitted knowing the mastermind or prime suspect who led the killing of solders have not been able to apprehend him. For us, the failure to apprehend him is intentional. It is not because the said militant leader is ‘reincarnated Anini of Benin”that is invisible.
My hunch is that some among the Army who claim to know the militant leader so well may have enjoyed some patronage or aided and abetted his oil theft before now. Catching and trying him for the killing of soldiers could make him sing to open a can of worms that would rope his military associates who provide him backing.
We always say the high level oil theft and assets vandalism in the operating space cannot go unhindered without the backing or involvement of the bloated army of occupation positioned across the landscape.
Why the army cannot apprehend a militant leader who is their prime target, we had thought their vengeful invasion and destruction of entire Okuama which claims yet unascertained lives and the displacement of survivors in jungle justice was enough punishment and deterrent already.
Apparently the Army won’t stop till Okuama and its people are pushed into extinction. After humiliating their monarch who was bounded and kept into dungeon like a common criminal for weeks before being released, they went after other community leaders.
Against pending cases in the competent court of law, the Army, with full backing of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the National Assembly have become law in themselves. They have been judge and prosecutor in their own case, usurping the Police authority to investigate and prosecute civilians.
With the avoidable death of President General of Okuama in the Army detention without the right to fair hearing, the Army is still not satisfied. Octogenarian Community Treasurer has also died in their custody, with over N400,000 extorted from his children.
Inside the Army cell remains four other detained suspect, among them, a Professor of Physic and varsity don, Arthur Ekpokpo who’s not an indigene of Okuama. His sin is being President of Ewu clan that covers Okuama.
Another detainee is tenant to the late Okuama President-Genera(PG) in his Ughelli resident where he was arrested. He has no link whatsoever to the crisis. Then there is the PG’s wife as well. No one knows their condition at the moment, the Army surreptitiously killing Okuama detainees without trial.
This is the point Okuama has exposed governance and institutional failure in the region. Imagine Governor Sheriff Oborevwori, through his information commissioner, telling Deltans that the Army have not briefed him on the second detainee that died in military custody.
How insensitive, so unfeeling can that be, from a governor? This is same Army that have treated Oborevwori as Chief Security Officer in the state with much disdain. The Army didn’t inform Oborevwori when they went on their doubtful peace mission in Okuama.
When they moved in to wipe out the entire community in vengeance, they barred the governor, Chief Security Officer, from accessing the community until they finished the mission to level all buildings and took out anyone who dared to stay in their way.
This is the kind of Army Governor Oborevwori will sit in his Asaba comfort zone and expect to inform him on how many Okuama detainees have died in military custody. What leadership myopia? Unabashedly, the governor expects Deltan people and the world watching to be sympathetic to his insensitivity and indifference to the plight of Okuama people by singing petty excuses.
Three days ago, the Niger Delta Peace Coalition was in Okuama to access the pace of work on the Primary Health Center, Community Hall, Primary and Secondary Schools projects the governor has initiated. No commitment matching the quality assurance and urgency to complete these projects in efforts at resettling and rehabilitating the displaced Okuama people.
At the Community Hall project, a section of the foundation has collapsed due to shoddy execution and inferior materials. Because the shoddy appeal is intentional, the contractors are all faceless in Okuama. The usual requirement of a visible signpost stating each contractor’s name, client and project sponsor are not adhered to.
Under this government’s false commitment to rebuilding Okuama, the people are living largely on self help, building makeshift tents on the rubbles of the Army destroyed community. The Anglican Church, the only building the Army left standing is swarmed by residents, risking epidemic outbreak.
Against the half truth bandied in the media, Okuama people are fed up with the IDP Camp at Ewu Community. This farming season majority of the IDPs have vacated an sailed to their homeland. When the Urhobo Association of Washington DC took down relief materials direct to Okuama, majority had relocated, to tend to their farms.
“Not only will free meals at the IDP Camp not satisfy us., it can’t train our children or pay our bills. If we don’t leave the camp and miss this farming season, we will be more miserable, with no money to take care of ourselves in the new year coming. We need government to finish these initial resettlement projects”, an opinion leader appealed in the community.
Aways from Oborevwori shying away from his duty to call the Army to order in gross abuse of power, Okuama has also exposed the lie called PANDEF.
Okuama has exposed that PANDEF is not a regional body. It is not the unifying body of Niger Delta ethnic groups. PANDEF is mere tool of deception created by Ijaws to give external stakeholders a false sense of cohesion among Niger Delta ethnic groups.
Recall I recently highlighted with proofs that Ijaws have found new heroes in their militant leaders who now call selves Ex-agitators post Amnesty. I made the incontrovertible point that after years of self serving armed struggle against the Nigerian state, the likes of Tompolo, Ateke Tom, Asari Dokubo, Egberipapa, Buoyloaf and contemporaries have gained much fame and fortune from federal government patronage and appeasement.
With this fame, fortune and recognition, these new unenviable heroes and role models, largely uninformed, now dictate the politics, power sharing and economy of Ijaw nation. They have also overtaken notable Ijaw Leader, Chief Edwin Clark and the Ijaw National Congress (INC) as primed opinion leaders whose voices Ijaw respect the most.
Having been relegated and their once imperious voices drowned by the new role models on who now leads direction for Ijawland, Clark and the INC, in search of new voices to remain relevant, came up with a PANDEF, dressed in the garb of an interethnic group but framed for Ijaw dominance with Clark as Supreme Leader for life.
That is why even under Ijaws’ firm grip, PANDEF display no sense of commitment to the region’s common good. That is why with PANDEF, Ijaws still brag that every opportunity and privilegesl accrued from the Nigerian state to Niger Delta must benefit Ijaws exclusively, they reserving the right to share crumbs to ethnic neighbors.
They say they alone spilled their blood to take to armed struggle against federal government and they alone must enjoy Amnesty, NDDC, sundry benefits to the region as though the oil and gas which bring the benefits is found only on Ijaw soil.
That is why PANDEF under Ijaw grip would come to public domain to say the body has not been briefed on the death of Okuama Community Leaders in Army cell, so they can’t speak on the matter. Okuama crisis resulted from its fight over fishing rights with Ijaw neighbor, Okoloba.
Granted, Ijaws reading this would rush to say Christopher Obiuwevbi, the Spokesman who spewed that PANDEF’s passing statement on Okuama is an Urhobo man, but an Ijaw controlled PANDEF put words in his mouth, aside the fact that he is longstanding E.K Clark disciple.
I bet if Okoloba was on same receiving end as Okuama, PANDEF would have been spitting fire and threatening. They would not wait to be briefed. Hell would have been left loose. PANDEF is such a lie, but ‘there is God oo.’
We Mobilize Others To Fight For Individual Causes As If Those Were Our causes
