The Historical Genesis of The Niger Delta Crisis
The Niger Delta militants are not the cause of the breakdown of law and order and widespread lawlessness, banditry, and sea piracy in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. They are equally the victims of the crisis as well as the agents-provocateurs of the original perpetrators of the crisis.
As far back as 1884, Nana Olomu, an Itsekiri chieftain was appointed “Governor” by the ruling imperial British colonial authorities to control the Eastern Niger Delta region after they have exiled the great Jaja of Opobo to the crown colony of Calabar. Nana Olomu terrorized the Urhobos kingdom with weapons supplied by the British. Nana Olomu assaulted and abducted Oraka of Okpara Waterside. But later, Nana Olomu fell out of favour with the British and they sent him on exile to the Gold Coast of Ghana in 1894.
The Itsekiris wanted their king to be referred to as the “Olu of Warri” in their great quest to usurp and wrest the royal title from the Urhobos whose kings have always been crowned as the Olu of Warri.
Ethnic rivalries between the Urhobos and Itsekiris over leadership was fuelled by the British whose divide and rule policies caused blood-letting ethnic conflicts among the Urhobos, Itsekiris, Isons and the other tribes in the country and the British fished in the troubled waters in the Niger Delta.
Boundary disputes over farmlands and waterways have always been the most common cause of inter-tribal wars and even wars across international boundaries such as the protracted boundary dispute between Nigeria and Cameroon over the Bakassi Peninsula. But what has made the Niger Delta crisis to deteriorate is the greed for resource control of the crude oil since the Royal Dutch Shell struck oil in the village of Oloibiri in 1956.
The illegal oil bunkerers joined in the oil rush, every senior military officer posted to the Eastern, and Western zones became stakeholders and shareholders. They employed and armed thugs to protect their illegal bunkering and the thugs joined to vandalize oil pipelines, siphon crude oil and smuggled truckloads of the oil to their black market as their criminal employers sold the stolen barges of oil to foreign oil smugglers offshore, in the Bight of Bonny and beyond.
The military regimes from 1979 to 1999 were all implicated in the illegal bunkering of crude oil and illegal sales of oil concessions. And if the truth must be told, the military administrators in Nigeria from 1979 to 1999 should arraigned and prosecuted for their engagements in illegal oil bunkering and illegal sales of oil blocks in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria.
Recommended reading: “Leadership and the Development of the Urhobo Nation” by Prof. Andrew G. Onokerhoraye. Published in The Guardian of Nigeria on July 18, 2003.
