The sophisticated political player that he is known to be, one did not expect General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida to join the bandwagon of indelicate sabre rattling by some of the North’s leaders, as they respond to malcontent moves from the Niger Delta.   IBB threatened to re-enter active military duty if need be, to fight again to keep the South-South within Nigeria.  It is probable though, that the crafty former dictator was simply playing to the gallery of the occasion.  However, the deadly quagmire in which we find ourselves presently is partly because major players like IBB continue to dance around certain glaring truths.IjawLand

Even before the subsidy protests began, it was easily predictable that it was only a matter of time before President Goodluck Jonathan would play the Delta-petroleum card. The country’s anti-democracy forces gave him no choice as they pushed him, gradually towards and eventually to the wall.  There is a war in the country between the old Northern establishment and democratic progress, and the battle is for the near absolute control of Nigeria’s abundant resources.

The absurdity of the whole conflict however, is that each side expects the other to roll over and play dead.  In other words, each side disregards the motives, underestimates the capabilities and misjudges the resolve, of the other.  While progressive elements imagine, unreasonably going by our experience, that the old order would relinquish their enormous power without a fight the Northern establishment for reasons best known to them are reluctant to accept that things have moved beyond the Nigeria of the sixties.

It does not take a Chike Obi Snr to deduce that the South-South is only reacting to what they see as a denial of their right to carve the meat, now that it becomes their turn to sit at the head of Nigeria’s dinner table.   They want to ensure that the country does not continue to be increasingly ‘ungovernable’ for their son, in doing so which they resorted to the most potent weapon available to them—petroleum.  And it has worked.  

There should not be any illusion that the compromise between government and labour unions on subsidy removal is essentially a result of negotiation.  When national labour presumably became an unwitting tool in the hands of oil subsidy beneficiaries and those who lost the last elections; and when labour leaders decided to up the ante by inviting oil field workers to down tools, President Jonathan played his joker.  Delta militants threatened to take over oil production facilities.  To cap it, presidential sources revealed that the government has begun talks with the United States on ‘military cooperation’ to protect Nigeria’s oil fields.

The implications of the threat are obvious, and they produced the desired effect as the usual suspects (and there is a long list) immediately began to express their ‘concerns and regrets’.  That was the general situation before Boko Haram last week executed the mother of attacks in Kano.

The Kano violence, which by some accounts claimed more than two hundred lives, is a jolt to remind us all that there is a big roaring inferno of merciless terrorism, next door to the mere sparkler of anti-subsidy withdrawal.  It reminds us that there is a lingering coup d’état against this elected government, to which Boko Haram merely became a handy firearm.  That side arm sadly has become major field artillery.  Worse still, the Kano attack fuels suspicion that Boko Haram is now a self-propelling attack drone on autopilot. It needs no telling then that we must find our way out of this self-made hell quickly, rationally and collectively, but definitely not with puny threats.

The election of President Goodluck Jonathan, from a minority group within Nigeria’s ‘wazobia’ mega power tussle, despite stiff opposition from the old Northern establishment, started the country decidedly on the road to full democracy.  However, no one should deny that Nigeria is yet practising a rampant ethnocracy whereby origin still plays the greatest part in the individuals’ choice of who occupies Aso Rock.  It is a peculiar obstacle but which serves as stepping stone or necessary rung on the ladder of Nigeria’s climb to full democracy.  Within that context, the Ijaw are currently in power.

For a people that reputedly are the fourth largest in the country and a region that has served as Nigeria’s collective manger for fifty odd years, even as their homeland is ravaged, the Ijaw believe they have earned the right to Nigeria’s leadership.  To get to Aso Rock the Ijaw have fought just about everyone along the way, with whom they came in contact—British colonialists, Igbo oppressors in the Eastern Region, Yoruba suppressors in Western Region, Itsekiri and Urhobo competitors in Bendel State and northern Nigeria neo-colonialists.  For the sake of fairness, it needs to be said also that some of their smaller neighbours (to be specific the Itsekiri) have in turn accused the Ijaw occasionally of atrocities akin to pogroms.

The timing and lump execution of subsidy removal is without doubt ill advised, even though it is necessary.   Just as the protests serve the government right, for attempting the old tactic of burying the introduction of a difficult policy within opportune crisis environment.  However, those arguments do not derive and are separate from the fundamental principles of our ethnic democracy.

Nigeria has moved, far away, from when one group could browbeat the other, militarily or in any other way.  When in 1967 Yoruba ‘owambe’ senior military officers in the then Nigerian Army failed to spearhead the needed military teeth (as Delta militants are now doing) to back the West’s independent position, Chief Awolowo was coerced into a necessary but unequal partnership.  Even now, the West is yet to recover from that fateful choice.  Interestingly, what trained soldiers could not do in 1967, civilians did in 1993.  Dr Frederick Fasheun, a civilian medical doctor and Gani Adams, a civilian trade artisan both championed the formation of Oodua People’s Congress ethnic militia, to defend the Yoruba against the armed onslaught of Sani Abacha’s regime.

The current battle is without doubt a fight for 2015 but if, in the process, we destroy [recently] laid foundations of our fledgling democracy, there might be no basis for new presidential elections.  For which nobody should even attempt to blame the victims.

Joe Igbokwe of the Action Congressof Nigeria a few days ago wrote that if South-South oil is good enough for Nigeria, their son should be good enough to be President.  That is not war mongering, as some allege.  It is a cold, sober, and for some, bitter truth.