FEATURE ARTICLE

Leburah GanagoTuesday, February 20, 2007
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Atlanta, GA, USA

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NIGERIA: NO PLACE TO HIDE


he reaction of the Nigerian government to the recent CNN documentary on the troubled Niger Delta region shows just how much nothing seems to have changed in that country since the demise of maximum ruler, General Sani Abacha, nine years ago. The Nigerian Information and Communication Minister Mr. Frank Nweke Jr. in reacting to the report was quoted as saying that :


�It was wrong. It fell short of the best practice of journalism and situation reports. It is indeed unethical, unacceptable, false and fallacious�.
What an overdose of grammar.! Then, the Information Minister went on rampage, mouthing what has now become the mantra of Nigerian government officials-that someone must be plotting to destabilize the country . ThisDay publication of February 9, 2007 reported that Mr. Frank Nweke alleged that the recent CNN documentation on the Niger Delta was a ploy by some internal and outside interests in collaboration to scuttle the political transition of the present administration. ThisDay quoted Mr Nweke as saying:
"In the past the Federal Government warned that some inordinately ambitious politicians acting in collaboration with certain forces in and outside Nigeria were bent on vitiating the accomplishments of this government and undermining its commitment to a smooth political transition.�
"Recent events indicates that these forces have now chosen the Niger Delta as the anchor point of their machinations and have been sponsoring the likes of Koinange to discredit the Federal Government's laudable policies aimed at reconstructing the region and improving the social conditions of the people," . The Nigerian Information and Communication Minister is not done yet. He was further quoted as saying that it (the CNN report) was the handi-work of politicians with inordinate ambitions who are bent on rubbishing the accomplishments of President Olusegun Obasanjo.�

I have never heard of such a dumb and silly statement from a government official anywhere in the world, except in Nigeria, anyway. Who appointed that guy a Minister? He is a disgrace to my country. Was that guy talking to people on the moon? That a television documentary which merely reported the situation in the country live as it is, translates into a destabilization plot?

Nonsense. Who wants to destabilize Nigeria and, what is that worth? Who feels threatened by the so-called sleeping or is it dying giant, of Africa ? Who wants to shoot a dead animal, anyway ?

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Yet, we all know that Olusegun Obasanjo is the greatest threat to the corporate existence of Nigeria today. His Stone Age tyranny and larger-than-life ambition to become the country�s life president has heated the political landscape to a boiling point. The country today is like a landmine waiting to be torched off. He has arrogantly told the world that he would not handover power if his choice for the presidency does not win the election even as he is arbitrarily , using his puppet establishments like the EFCC and INCE, to eliminate potential contestants from the political race.

Obasanjo has ridiculed himself by defining a criminal (whom he would not hand over to ) as someone who is corrupt. Yet, the whole world knows that he is overtly corrupt. By his own definition, Obasanjo may end up becoming the biggest criminal Nigeria has ever known. A team of US journalists who visited Nigeria recently on the invitation of the presidency went back to the States, confirming that the presidency is corrupt and that he is using his phony anti-corruption campaign to persecute political opponent. In fact, if he is investigated Obasanjo would be found to have stolen more money than Sani Abacha, Mobutu Sesesseko, Ferdinand Marcos, combined. He is using fronts at home and abroad to loot the National treasury. However, I have always maintained that it is in Obasanjo�s interest to go home in peace at the expiration of his eight years of waste and corruption to enjoy his looted Niger Delta oil money. No one will bother him; no one will probe him. There is no precedent in Nigeria of probing a thieving former president. Babangida is there at his hilltop mansion Minna, enjoying his loots. But in the event that Obasanjo defies the voice of the oracle and insists on perpetuating himself in power, I think he would be pushing his luck too far this time around.

The Obasanjo�s accomplishment which Mr. Nweke is talking about is that of tyranny and corruption. It is my fervent prayer that God sends a Messiah to Nigeria who would actually rubbish this strange �accomplishment�.

Now, Mr. Nweke who by virtue of his office has no direct access to the oil money somehow finds a way of getting his cut. He has floated a phony scheme, something that looks like an image laundry outfit for the Obasanjo. He calls it HEART OF AFRICA project. Last December he went to Washington DC to launch it. I am reliably told that the American press ignored him there. A few days ago I received an email from someone apparently inviting me, to another launch of THE HEART OF AFRICA project billed for the Georgia International Convention Center, Atlanta from February 22 to23, 2007. Accompanying the invitation are clips of some selected eye-catching structures in Nigeria-among them the Lagos Marina, Ultra-Modern Government House Complete, Port Harcourt, The National Assembly Complex, An Emir�s palace, etc. The program indicates that there is going to be exhibition of Nigerian photographs. However, my suspicion is that the clips of beautiful sites in Nigeria would be on display to show Americans just how �Great and Beautiful� a country is Nigeria. But I can bet on it that the Niger Delta slums that I saw on the CNN the other day-the source of Mr. Nweke�s rage against the CNN will never feature at the exhibitions. However, thanks to the CNN and other information media the outside world now understands that there are more ugly sites in Nigeria than there are those paradise gardens Mr. Nweke is going to put on display.

What is more, the international community understands that it is the Niger Delta oil that transformed those beautiful sites that Mr. Nweke is going to exhibit.

The Minister if I may preempt him , is likely to tell the American people how safe Nigeria is to do business and how much the Obasanjo anti-corruption campaign has eradicated corruption from the system. However, in his heart of heart Mr. Nweke knows that he is embarking on a futile and wasteful project. It is another way of squandering the oil money. For Americans and Nigerians in America know better than Mr. Nweke and his team are likely to admit. That the Nigeria of today is one of the most dangerous places on earth to do business. That Obasanjo is espousing and indeed escalating corruption, not fighting it. The HEART OF AFRICA project will never change anything that the outside world knows about Nigeria and its corrupt rulers. So what is Nweke coming to do in America? Of course, he would come here and lodge in five star hotels, go on shopping spree , get his traveling allowances in hard currency and maybe, do some private �business�. Who says this guy is not smart? Here is a guy who struck a deal to stage a one-game American football match in Nigeria for a princely sum of N625 million.

Yet, the whole world knows that Nigeria far from being the heart of Africa is the continent�s nightmare.

Perhaps more pathetic is Mr. Nweke�s lamentation over what he alleged was CNN�s consistent report (for the past eight years) �depicting Nigeria as a country in perpetual crisis------ So if Nigeria is not in perpetual crisis what is going on in the Niger Delta? What is going on between President Obasanjo and his Vice , Abubakar Atiku?

What is offensive to Mr. Nweke and his task masters at Aso Rock about the CNN report? Is it the footages showing slums and shanties of the Niger Delta.? Is it those of impoverished locals scooping mould water from ponds for drinking ? Or is it the display of the defiant and dreaded looking �militants� Or is it the parade of hostages ?.

Mr. Nweke charges that CNN staged the report. But how on earth could the CNN have staged the scenes in that documentary. Are the hostages shown not the Filipinos ( white foreigners )?. Mr. Nweke sounds so brainless when he claims that after all, he had toured the Niger Delta and was never kidnapped , as if he was disputing the issue of hostage taking in the Niger Delta. Hear him � I have traveled across the creeks in the regions when the agitation was more tense and (sic) confragrating . Nobody kidnapped us, neither did they attack us� Hmmm!. Is this guy from outer space? He sounds like billionaire fugitive Umaru Dikko who at the pinnacle of power in the wasteful NPN years became so power drunk with the Niger Delta oil money that he bluffed that he did not believe that there is hunger in Nigeria as he was yet to come across anyone scavenging for food from refuse dump. Well, I do not blame Mr. Nweke . I have also been wondering why the kidnappers in the Niger Delta have failed to kidnap Nigerian government officials who are actually the ones looting our oil money and making life difficult for us but choose instead to prey on hapless foreigners who are only caught in the crossfire of Nigeria�s death game of oil politics.

In one of the Nigerian Dailies� reports, Mr.Nweke claimed that the �militants� in the CNN documentary are cultists. Someone who calls himself the leader of MEND, also claimed that those militias are not MEND members. Yet, this is no ground to discredit or dispute the CNN report. Be they MEND members or not ( they actually addressed themselves as MEND). Take a look at this remark: � MEND has come to stay , there is no force in the universe that can stop MEND�. If a rival faction or splinter group of the various agitation groups in the Niger Delta had decided to impersonate MEND ,an apparently more popular or vocal group and had introduced themselves as such, that does not in anyway suggest that the CNN reporter Mr. Jeff Konaige manipulated the story. And the allegation that Mr. Konaige has paid some criminals to stage a show for him to film is as silly as it is absurd. Is the Nigerian government as represented by Mr. Frank Nweke, now denying the existence of �militant� groups in the Niger Delta.? Or are they saying that hostage taking is not going on in the Niger Delta?

Truth is, aspects of the Niger Delta struggle has snowballed into an armed struggle . But the peoples of the area cannot be held responsible for this sad state of affairs. This environment is created by the violet nature of the current reigning bandits in country . Apart from the government making violet form of agitation attractive, they ( government officials) sometimes deliberately recruit the army of jobless youths in the area , arm and deploy them to terrorize and silence political opponents. By the same token, it is no accident that my home state , Rivers State, happens to be the most violet and most corrupt in the country today. It is also no coincidence that Rivers State has suffered the worst casualties of high-profile political assassinations in Nigeria . It is headed by a blood-sucking vampire with the tallest political ambition in the country.

Yet, there is another dimension to the Niger Delta saga: the situation is so complex that all sorts of characters from within and without the area are taking advantage of the situation and the people. We have had allegations of government officials making brisk business from release of hostage negotiations. We read about it on the website from Nigerian dailies .So what is false about the CNN report?

We have been here before-the blame game and denials. Before Frank Nweke, we have had the Uche Chukwumerijes, the Walter Ofonagoros. They came and left, disappearing into oblivion. However, Comrade Uche Chukwumerije seems to have had a chance to salvage his reputation as he is now in the Senate fighting on the side of the people. But I do not think Mr. Frank Nweke who do not appear as gifted as Chukwumerije and Ofonagoro could have a second chance to redeem his image.

Yes, the Obasanjo dictatorship looks every inch a carbon copy of the Abacha�s. Or did I hear someone say Obasanjo has beaten Abacha�s record , in all things ugly about an administration?. Alhaji Lateef Jakande former Lagos State Governor and well respected Nigerian leader, in a recent interview with Guardian newspaper gave this damning verdict on the Obasanjo administration: NIGERIA UNDER ABACHA IS NOT AS BAD AS THE NIGERIA WE HAVE NOW. ( The Guardian, February 13, 2007).

When the Ogoni people braved the security condone waived around them and came out from the bush to protest their repression to the UN fact finding mission to Nigeria in April 1996, Lt.Col. Dauda Komo, the contour �faced Zuru soldier who presided over the Ogoni pacification agenda was stunned by their audacity and dismissed the protesting Ogonis as University of Port Harcourt students, hired by MOSOP . Yet, Vanguard newspaper of April 11, 1996 and A.M. News of April 14, 1996 displayed the pictures of the protesting Ogonis which included little kids of about seven to ten years old , some of them bare bodies.

Now the Nigerian government seems to have taken cover under the MEND repudiation of the report-disowning the group in the documentary. But it does not matter if the footages of the menacing gun men in that report are members of MEND or FNDIC or any other �militant� group in the Niger Delta. After all, it is a well-known fact that there are several groups, splinter groups and factions of those who are rightly or wrongly, claiming to be fighting the Niger Delta cause. So if a different group of militants have elected to impersonate MEND and presented themselves as MEND to a foreign reporter, this does not in any way make a case of manipulation against the reporter. There was no way the reporter could have known the difference between MEND and any other of the militant groups in the Niger Delta more so, when they have identified themselves as MEND .

Given that they are not MEND the modus operandi of the group is the same as that of MEND-hostage taking, kidnapping . In fact, there is hardly any way of verifying or authenticating members of such a shadowy underground organizations as MEND or FNDIC . I can tell how some of the underground organizations operate when it comes to publicity. In fact, the name Jomo Gbomo may not be the real name of the one claiming it. So in such a situation if one happens to introduce himself by that name to a reporter it is not the responsibility of the reporter to go about verifying his real identity. The reporter would simply go ahead to address him a s he has introduced himself.

MEND�s purported allegation that FNDIC which they claim was responsible for taking the Filipinos hostages , acted on a political agenda-seeking to influence the PDP governorship primary in Delta State, does nothing to differentiate the two organizations. MEND has equally included political demands- the demand for the release of the deposed Bayelsa State governor, Chief Alamieyeseigha among others.

However, the �militants� scourge is not peculiar to the Niger Delta region; only that that of the Niger Delta is much more pronounced. Generally, Nigeria is a lawless state whose greatest outlaw is the man leading the country, President Olusegun Obasanjo. It is an open secret that there exists a state of anarchy in Nigeria today-that the machinery of government has broken down. And so what we have in that country now is a reign of banditry, where government politicians use their loots to acquire private armies for their personal security and to terrorize other helpless law-abiding citizens. It is really sad that the man who calls himself Information and Communication Minister ,Mr. Frank Nweke, is so na�ve that he believes the rest of the civilized world is shaded from the huge mess going on in Nigeria. Mr. Nweke needs to read this caption on the front page of AFRICA ABROAD, USA Newspaper, 8 YEARS OF OBASANJO: SHAME OF A NATION (Africa Abroad USA, January 30,2007). In the background of the caption is a crowd of job applicants, which the paper estimates at 20,000, reportedly showing up for 25 job openings at a Bank in Lagos. This is a government that makes so much noise about economic reform. Is theirs an economic reform that drives away jobs?

The central argument in the CNN documentary is encapsulated in the opening paragraph of another Niger Delta story in the NATIONAL GEORGRAPHIC magazine : �The Niger Delta holds some of the world�s richest oil deposits, yet Nigerians living there are poorer than ever, violent is rampant, and water are fouled�. This is the crux of the matter. So the CNN report is unassailable . Nweke and his task masters have no case against CNN. Their crude attempt to blackmail the Cable News Network goes further to diminish them. I think the only problem the Nigerian government has against the CNN report is that it exposes to the outside world, the injustice being perpetrated against the ethnic minorities of the Niger Delta and the hypocrisy and dishonesty of the Obasanjo administration. Like the story reporter Mr. Jeff Konaige rightly remarked ,the Nigerian government is enraged �Because we exposed the situation in the Niger Delta to the world�. Mr. Konaige went on to note that although the intention was not to embarrass the Nigerian government, it (the documentary) hit a very raw nerve: �It shows the world that there is a problem in the Niger Delta�. Yet, an apparently unruffled Jeff Konaige has a piece of advice, very valuable advice, for Mr. Frank Nweke and his masters �that he expected the Nigerian government to address the problem ( in the Niger Delta) rather than going after the messenger. And Anderson Cooper , CNN Super Star and anchor of AC 360, who ran the story on his program for three consecutive days, remarked that it was a story which �some governments would not want you to hear�.

This month, February, looks like a particularly bad one , in the western media ,for the Nigerian government .The National Geographic magazine in its February issue has Niger Delta as its cover story. The no- holds-barred report captioned CURSE OF THE BLACK GOLD: HOPE AND BETRAYAL IN THE NIGER DELTA, is a must read for anyone who has anything to learn about the Niger Delta and oil politics in Nigeria. I strongly recommend it to Mr. Nweke . VANITY FAIR magazine also did a story on Niger Delta, this same month.

Yes, a story on the Niger Delta situation is bad news for the Nigerian government, any day. Yet, this is good for us who live in the region and who have had the singular misfortune of being at the receiving end of the grand conspiracy between the Nigerian ruling cabal and transnational oil corporations to drive us to extinction. Ken Saro Wiwa who had as the central focus of his international campaign, the exposure of the atrocities committed by transnational oil corporations in the Niger Delta. had argued that if the home countries of these transnational oil corporations are aware of their double standards of operation in Third World countries and the human rights abuse they perpetrate ,they would put pressure on them to change their ways.

The Niger Delta issue will continue to remain Nigeria�s nightmare. It will not go away; no government, no dictatorship, no military might can decree it away. And until it is resolved in the context of justice for the oppressed ethnic minorities of the region Nigeria will know no peace. As for those behind the plundering of our oil wealth and the unleashing of terror on our peoples they will continue to be exposed to the civilized world out there. And there will be no place to hide for the evil rulers of Nigeria and their collaborators until they are caught up by nemesis.