FEATURE ARTICLE

Chigachi EkeWednesday, August 31, 2016
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Port Harcourt, Nigeria

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ARC. ETTEH: TRANSCENDING MENTAL DELTA


Arc. Esoetok I. I. Etteh Snr.

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stupendously wealthy merchant from present day Kolokuma/Opokuma Local Government Area, LGA, of Bayelsa State, amassed wealth in the 1940s sending his fleet to distant markets in Yenagoa, Warri, Port Harcourt and Onitsha. For Yeigba Tombebe, the Niger Delta was El Dorado. "Wealth is at home," he never tired admonishing Ijaws who breezed in donning the latest fashion only to pawn their expensive suits to raise transport money back to their stations where they served as contented sidekicks.

Yeigba, easily the richest man in northern Ijaw, quarrelled the Ijaw man for going to Lagos and Enugu for greener pastures when all the wealth was right under his feet. He made this pronouncement before Shell struck oil at Oloibiri in 1956. If general import was the challenge he was for young persons taking over the distribution chain. And women too, as long as they could fit out cargo boats he was willing to advance them credit. We may never know the immense opportunities that thrived in colonial Niger Delta without understudying the life of this self-made tycoon who mentored countless other merchants.

A decade later a younger Harold Dappa-Biriye was to contradict him. Biriye said life in the Niger Delta was sheer hell requiring special intervention from Lagos and Enugu. Where Yeigba saw opportunity, Biriye saw problem. Whereas the Yeigba mantra inspired ultra achievers like Professor Lawrence Baraebibai Ekpebu, Biriye inspired a different crop of disaffected agitators like Isaac Adaka Boro unease with Lagos and Enugu for not intervening enough. Biriye's fearful picture of natives trapped in the state of nature adequately embarrassed the departing British into setting up the 1957 Willinks Minorities Commission. The result was the declaration of the region as Special Areas to be developed by interventionist Niger Delta Development Board, NDDB.

To some extent both Yeigba and Biriye were right as their respective view about the social condition in their world was not exclusive. What Yeigba was saying is that the region had enough wealth for the material comfort of the people. Rather than slaving abroad as salaried labourer the Ijaw man should be helped to start business at home, as long as he was prepared to put in the same long hours he worked abroad. External intervention was welcomed but first concerted efforts by individual natives must precede such overture.

This view was faulted by Biriye who had the big picture in mind. Colonialism, he contended, virtually eroded the local autonomy necessary for economic aspiration. A handy example was the Comey Crisis that brought him to limelight in early 1950s. In pre-colonial Niger Delta Ijaw monarchs imposed and collected import duties from European supercargoes. British colonialism, however, wrestled this right from them. Rather than import duties Ijaw monarchs were paid a token called comey by the British.

It was this same comey that newly appointed Premier Nnamdi (Zik) Azikiwe, who ignominiously sacked an Obolo-Ijaw son called Professor Eyo Eta from office, tried to abolish through a bill he introduced in the Eastern House of Assembly. Biriye's fiery petitions forced Zik to withdraw the contentious bill. Any government that presumed to inherit the regional wealth must also be prepared to assume its liabilities.

It logically follows that Niger Delta is two-world: Yeigba's economically self-sustaining Niger Delta and Biriye's impossible political enclave requiring intervention. This binary consciousness plays out right into the 21st Century and reason why at any given time we are challenged to negotiate and renegotiate what we mean by Niger Delta. Such exercise validates the reality of a "Mental Delta," defined as the Other that crushes our collective psyche.

Now, the man who effectively balanced the Yeigba-Biriye consciousness in his public life is the Ijaw nationalist called Arc. Esoetok Ikpong Ikpong Etteh Snr. Against the assumed righteousness of minority struggle he expressed reservation while serving as Chairman of Works and Projects Committee, 1995-1996, and Zonal Director of Eastern Zone, 1998-2000, of defunct Oil Mineral Producing Area Development Commission, OMPADEC, that succeeded NDDB.

Arc. Etteh Snr noted that a great deal of the infrastructure he built was gleefully vandalised by the very beneficiaries. It was a premeditated crime that left him disoriented and disillusioned. Considering his personal sacrifice in walking away from a lucrative practice to join the Niger Delta struggle at a time when it was dangerous to do so, the least he expected was some cooperation from the people. But projects after projects were vandalised after commissioning. Clearly, something unseen by OMPADEC and the Federal Military Government was at work.

To understand what was happening he carried out a rare field study that shifted attention from infrastructure to people. His findings were instructive, put mildly. Vandalization of public utilities, he painfully realised, was the hallmark of repressed consciousness. Projects conceived and implemented without inputs from potential beneficiaries were likely to be destroyed than preserved. Secondly, the same untenable reality complained by Biriye in the 1950s was not without its fatalistic effect on the autochthones who smelt genocide. When people saw development as destabilisation they readily sabotage it. This negative attitude must be corrected by means of education.

Helping locals transcend Mental Delta became a necessary condition for infrastructural development. This realisation prompted him to re-examine the human content of OMPADEC with the view to striking a balance between man and his environment. It was near zero. Arc. Etteh Snr therefore argued that beneficiaries of developmental projects should also be developed; warning "...if we develop structures and fail to develop the people, these people would destroy these structures we so much cherished." His caveat was buried under political expediency. But Nigeria had cause to remember him when those destroying developmental projects turned their hands against our economic life line-oil pipelines.

No sooner was his stint at OMPADEC over than the Ijaw nation drafted him 2000 to handle its business in his home state of Akwa Ibom and Rivers State. That was how he was unanimously elected Chairman of Ijaw National Congress, INC, Eastern Zone. With the advent of democracy the coastal states rapidly heated up as newly formed Ijaw Youth Council, IYC, under Felix Tuodolo mobilised massively. Two years earlier the Kaiama Declaration was 1998 issued calling for joint struggle with anyone with the energy to fight or talk, depending on one's interpretation of the document.

As INC Chairman, 2000-2006, Arc. Etteh Snr consumed himself with the Ijaw struggle. The organisation he headed gave him leverage to control the pace of events in Ijawland East. His spacious home became a pilgrimage centre for radicals and not so radicals alike. In particular, IYC East needed fund for its mobilisation programme and he responded, advising and encouraging.

His greatest legacy was building bridge between Ijaws and minorities of Akwa Ibom and Rivers States. Other notable bridge builders of the period leading to the emergence of Ijaw-born President Goodluck Jonathan were the troika of Tuodolo, Asari Dokubo and Miabiye Kuromiema. As pioneer president of IYC, Tuodolo opened dialogue with Igbo youths. Since Nigerian independence there was no rapport between Igbo and Ijaw youths; Tuodolo changed that. His successor, Asari, 2nd IYC president, also promoted inter ethnic alliance and was hugely popular beyond Ijawland. Then the cerebral Kuromiema, 5th IYC president, built on the legacies of his predecessors.

Impressed by his INC track record, President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua nominated him to serve as Executive Director Projects, EDP, of Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC. That was in August 2009. The idea was for him to practice his own theorem of "developing the Niger Delta people while developing structures." A pleasantly surprised Arc. Etteh Snr remarked on Yar'Adua's prodigious mind and embraced his new mandate with renewed optimism. His relationship with Yar'Adua was akin to the friendship that existed between Biriye and General Yakubu (Jack) Gowon. He enjoyed Yar'Adua's total confidence.

A product of the famous Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, where he bagged his BS and MS, Arc. Etteh Snr had vested interest in the government of Yar'Adua who was fellow alumnus. When the president signalled he wanted peace in the region, Arc. Etteh Snr personally entered the creeks with other Ijaw leaders to talk to Ijaw militants who knew him well. Yar'Adua's amnesty endured due mainly to the efforts of struggle heroes like Arc. Etteh Snr. Yar'Adua died in office and former President Jonathan who succeeded him prematurely dissolved the NDDC board in 2011. But by effectively developing an economically self-reliant man while developing infrastructure in the region, Arc. Etteh Snr comes across as the awakener of Yeigba-Biriye consciousness.

Citation: Born 1st September 1946 into the royal family of High Chief Ikpong Etteh and Deconess Nkaepe Ulaeto Ikpong Ikpong Etteh of Upenekang Town in Ibeno Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom, Arc. Esoetok Ikpong Ikpong Etteh Snr is 13th generation of the Etteh Dynasty. We honour him on the auspicious occasion of his 70th birthday, 1st September 2016.

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