Abidde

Abidde’s Anti-Nigeria Diatribe

Nafata Bamaguje

It is disheartening that supposedly educated Nigerians who should know better resort to petty ethnic jingoism in the discourse of pressing national issues. The latest is Sabella Abidde’s harangue - Nigeria’s policy towards the Ijaw published on Nigeria Village Square.

His asinine tirade outrageously misrepresented the Niger Delta conflict, falsely portraying Ijaws as hapless innocent victims of a rapacious malevolent Nigerian nation. It was all premised on a disingenuous mix of misinformation and half-truths.

Hear him: “…Ijaw are the largest: with a population of more than 25 million, are indigenous to seven federating states…Offshore or onshore, more than 70 percent of all oil reservoirs are located on/inside the Ijaw territory. On account of this, the Ijaw own the most lucrative and the most coveted land and waterways in Nigeria.”
“…there is no social, political and economic development. Nothing good is being done for the Ijaw.”

I don’t know where he got the inflated figure of 25 million Ijaw people, as it certainly doesn’t tally with our census figures. If Ijaws - Nigeria’s fifth largest ethnic group are more than 25 million, and there are four much larger ethnic groups ahead. Then the remaining 300 or so ethnic nationalities total no more than 10 million given Nigeria’s estimated population of 150 million.

By the way, the Efik-Ibibios in Cross River & Akwa Ibom are the largest ethnic group in the south-south, not Ijaws as erroneously parroted. Ijaws may be more widely dispersed, that doesn’t make them the most populous.
Abidde’s bogus claim of Ijaws being indigenous to seven states is equally fallacious. Outside Bayelsa (and possibly parts of Rivers), Ijaws are settlers in the territories of other Niger Deltans.

Ordinarily this shouldn’t matter since we are supposed to be citizens of one nation. But as Ijaw irredentists like Abidde have decided to make it an issue, it becomes necessary to set the records straight as these bogus claims have at various times pitted Ijaws in territorial disputes against other Nigerians along our Atlantic coast from Akwa Ibom to Ondo and even Lagos.

Since Ijaws are not indigenous to the seven states Abidde and his irredentist cohorts claim, then his spurious assertion of Ijaws harbouring 70% of our crude oil reservoirs is a blatant lie.

These false territorial claims betray the hegemonic ambitions of the Ijaw secessionists masquerading as Niger Delta militants. Their agenda is to corner all the oil wealth and lord it over non-Ijaw Niger Deltans. Hence Edwin Clark calls for an Ijaw super-state to encompass all Ijaws regardless of the aspirations of non-Ijaw Niger Deltans among whom Ijaws have settled.

Abidde alluded to the anti-Nigerian disposition of Ijaws when he stated: “The Ijaw ethnic nationality never wanted to be part of post-colonial Nigeria”. So the present contrived Niger Delta crisis is just a convenient ruse to prosecute their long simmering secessionist agenda. Little wonder Asari Dokubo wants a Sovereign National Conference to oversee the dismemberment of this potentially great nation.

Hearing Abidde tell it, Ijaws are targeted victims of oppression and deprivation: “there is no social, political and economic development. Nothing good is being done for the Ijaw”.

Yet Bayelsa, the only Ijaw state has the nation’s highest standard of living as evidenced by a recent CBN report on poverty in Nigeria. In other words Ijaws are better off than other Nigerians, but one wouldn’t know that from the vicious lies peddled by Abidde and his self-serving rabble-rousing kinsmen in the creeks.

Stupendous derivation revenues and investments by NDDC, Niger Delta ministry and oil companies all count for nothing. Not to forget that an Ijaw man is the second most powerful Nigerian. Given UMYA’s failing health we may soon have an Ijaw president…Further rubbishing the misleading canard that Ijaws are oppressed in Naija.

In any case, who is the “Nigeria” that is against our saintly Ijaw compatriots, when some of the biggest thieves that ruined the Niger Delta are Ijaws and other Niger Deltans?
Is it we the “parasitic North” who are much worse off than Ijaws, yet are the favorite bogeyman of unintelligent southern ethnic jingoists? Or the Yorubas who rallied to protect their Ilaje cousins from aggressive Ijaw expansionism and repulsed Ijaw aggression in Lagos several years ago?

Is it the Ibibios in Akwa Ibom who just a few months ago battled its minority Ijaws in another territorial dispute? Or the Igbos whom Abidde accused of being domineering oppressors in the first republic?

Never mind that the Eastern region was at a time led by an Eastern minority non-Igbo, and that as part of the old Eastern region, Ijaws benefitted from Igbo oil palm and coal revenues long before crude oil was discovered. In times past, slaves from Igbo hinterland also boosted Niger Delta economy. The best known of them was the famed Jaja of Opobo who became a naturalized Ijaw.
But today some ungrateful Ijaws selfishly want to keep all the crude oil for themselves as they agitate for secession.

For some inexplicable reason, Nigerians hate Ijaws. It used to be Igbos who whined ad nauseum about being hapless persecuted victims of the Nigerian state. It would appear that Ijaw propagandists like the pseudo-intellectual called Sabella Abide, have taken up this invidious pastime in order to justify their insurrectionist guerilla war against Nigeria.
And this misguided ethnic chauvinist is being touted as one of “eminent Nigerians” to negotiate an end to the Niger Delta crisis…I sorry for Naija.

The truth is that the major Southern ethnic groups - Igbos and Yorubas - are formidable obstacles to Ijaw hegemonic machinations in the Niger Delta, as they cannot be ridden over roughshod like smaller ethnic groups…hence the need to demonize these larger ethnic nationalities. In Rivers state for instance where Igbos are the largest ethnic group, much of the onshore oil is in Igbo areas. Despite Abidde’s misinformation, Ijaws in Ondo cannot honestly claim Ilaje oil.

The Niger Delta problem is basically the same as that of the rest of Nigeria, namely corrupt inept leadership that has been unable to translate our nation’s abundant endowments into meaningful development with enhanced living standards for the citizenry. It is only more poignant in the Niger Delta because our oil wealth flows from there.

Nothing underscores this crass ineptitude of our idiotic leaders as the fact that we import petrol, even though we are Africa’s largest producer of crude oil; that our industrial and economic growth is crippled by epileptic power supply, while we wastefully flare natural gas that could have been used to generate abundant cheap electricity.

We must resist any attempt by pea-brained short-sighted ethnic jingoists to tribalize this fundamental issue of mal-governance that is the root of Nigeria’s underdevelopment. The Niger Delta crisis is not an Ijaw issue anymore than June 12 was about Yorubas.

Nafata Bamaguje