Ambily Etekpe, Eugene Ugwulor Nwala, Young Ayotamuno and Martins C. Jumbo did something unusual in the Niger Delta. Concerned that the scourge of time was taking its toll on our revered heroes, the four methodically began to interview key players in the struggle for Rivers State creation. Their ground-breaking ‘Harold Dappa-Biriye: His Contributions to Politics in Nigeria’ is fit to stand as Chapter One of Rivers Chronicles.
In reality, the work is a compilation of original documents written by Dappa-Biriye himself. “These documents dating from the early 1940s were all written by my father. He had no secretary, just one typist called Joe Barnes. Some he wrote while quietening a crying baby on his shoulder,” confirmed Miss Ibitomie Dappa-Biriye who manages her father’s foundation.
We have sieved through records and archives and still came to the same conclusion, namely: The grand old man of Ijaw nationalism single-handedly conceived and propagated Rivers State before bringing others on board. At a point, to avert serious threats to his person, Dappa-Biriye dropped his Wilcox family name and assumed the one he is known with today, just as he started writing under the pen name of Lobito Bay.
Charles Ogan’s masterpiece, ‘Alfred Diete-Spiff: A Legacy of Development in the Niger Delta’ and Etekpe et al’s ‘Alfred Diete-Spiff: The Vision and Realism of a Statesman’ will form the authentic Chapter Two. The number one reason Nigerians are poor biographers is intellectual hypocrisy that sees no fault in their protagonists. Ogan cleverly avoids this pitfall meekly smiting his own breast in sincere contrition that wins his hero the reader’s sympathy, “Yet, Alfred Diete-Spiff is not an Angel. Like all mortals, he also has limitations in both public and private life.”
Chapter Three would be Etekpe et al’s ‘Lawrence Ekpebu: His Contributions to National Development, Integration and International Cooperation.’ This is one work that gives the nitty-gritty of how Rivers was built from scratch by the great Commander Diete-Spiff. For instance, “Pan African Bank (PAB) was equally established through his (Ekpebu’s) efforts by convincing the governor based on his internship experience at Chase Manhattan Bank while at Princeton University… The bank started with a nominal share capital of 400,000 pounds (N800,000) divided into 400,000 shares of N2.00 each. The share capital was later increased to N91,345,797 and fully paid up” (pp.59-60).
Chapter Four would go to Dr. Peter Otunuya Odili’s autobiographical ‘Conscience and History-My Story.’As Rivers governor, 1999-2007, his tenure interests us for two reasons. Firstly, the Rivers he served was part of the larger Niger Delta transiting from dictatorship to democracy. He returned Rivers leadership back to indigenes after decades of misrule by non-indigenous military officers. Seen from this restorative angle, he was effectively in charge.
And secondly, he came to power when the region was also transiting from passive to armed resistance. Responding to the Kaiama Declaration of 1998, the youth began to mobilise. Notably, the Ijaw Youth Council, IYC, and other youth organisations were formed. The battle cry was resource control “By any means necessary.” Without the powers to command the armed forces, like today’s Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue State, Odili was helpless stopping violence.
What started as non-violent agitation under moderate IYC pioneer President Felix Tuodolo soon turned bloody. It all started when President Olusegun Obasanjo made the costly mistake of destroying Kaiama and Odi, all in the bid to punish those responsible for the Declaration. His action only helped extremists within the IYC to install Asari Dokubo as president after Tuodolo. Asari declared war on Nigeria reducing Odili’s Rivers (IYC Eastern Zone), Diepriye Alamieyeseigha’s Bayelsa State (IYC Central Zone) and James Ibori’s Delta State (IYC Western Zone) to potential killing fields.
Obasanjo made his second mistake ensnarling Asari with fake amnesty before kidnapping him from Odili’s capital, to believe Onisoya J. Odum who served as scribe to the Asari-led Niger Delta Peoples Salvation Front (NDPSF), political wing of the Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force (NDPVF). Asari’s absence created a vacuum rapidly filled by his commanders who formed their own private armies of militants. Things got completely out of hand as the militants killed citizens, soldiers and foreign oilmen. Like fathers eating sour grape only for the teeth of their children to be set on edge, Odili, Ibori and Alamieyeseigha got blamed for a problem created by Obasanjo.
In understanding the extraneous forces at work in Odili’s Rivers not adequately captured in‘Conscience and History- My Story,’ therefore, a sequence of events must be factored in: Years of military misrule alienated the youth who served Nigeria and the Kaiama Declaration. While hunting down those responsible for the Declaration, Obasanjo blundered, razing Kaiama and Odi. The destruction of these towns helped extremists install Asari as IYC president. Asari’s armed struggle was exponentially bloody in Rivers, Bayelsa and Delta. Obasanjo kidnapped Asari whose absence motivated his boys to form their own private armies that killed indiscriminately. But governors of the three states unjustly took the blame.
Agent of history
Odili interests us as a product of historical struggle and agent of history. As a product of minority history, he is successor to a long line of icons traceable to Dappa-Biriye himself. Defining himself as a loyal son of Rivers from the Ndoni ethnic minority, this loyalty is recoverable in the recognition he accords those who contributed in making him what he is. His identification with what Dappa-Biriye lived and died for conditioned what he did, and refused to do, while in office.
One problem consistent with a people at crossroads is the tendency to blame the preceding generations for doing nothing. Nigerians blame “ancestral curse” for their woes even though Chika Onyeani’s‘Capitalist Nigger’ indicts them as lazy bones ever relying on whites and Asians. Odili never dabbles into the blame game. His attitude is that of conscientised memory rather than lethargy or selective amnesia.
His inspiration comes from Commander Diete-Spiff and his Rivers First Eleven for giving Rivers free education. He extols Eze Emmanuel N. Opurum (cruelly flogged by NCNC thugs for his loyalty to Dappa-Biriye), Jaja S. Amachree, Davies D. Manuel, GKJ Amachree, etc, who joined Dappa-Biriye in separating Rivers from the bandwagon Calabar, Ogoja, Rivers (COR) State favoured by external interests.
Maya Angelou says, “I have learnt that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Rivers people will never forget that Odili rehabilitated our traditional rulers, restored the prestige of our judges and when our father Dappa-Biriye passed on in 2005, gave him a befitting burial.
As an agent of history, Odili enthroned equity in Rivers politics. Campaigning side by side with Governor Ada George, 1992-1993, whom he deputised, Odili was honest acknowledging the genuine complaints of the upland, not limited to Ikwerres, Ogonis, Ekpeyes and his own Ndoni tribe, who felt excluded from producing the governor. Elected deputy governor, he immediately set in motion a process that would produce an Ikwerre governorfifteen years later.
He recalls, “Rotimi Amaechi met me after the Constituent Assembly and warmed himself to me as a young man who was ready to work hard and showed some aptitude for political capacity. I took him in as a young friend and employed him as a staff of my hospital in the Administration Department. It was through Amaechi that I got to knowing Celestine Omehia…” (Conscience, p. 66). The Ikwerre-born Omehia and Amaechi would all serve as governors after him; a development that fostered equity, but just not yet.
What hope for Riverine?
How did Odili emerge the first upland governor? Simple: The esteemed Dappa-Biriye asked riverine Ibiapuye Yellowe and Ebenezer Isokariari to step down for him. The Father of Rivers saw the injustice in the riverine denying the upland the governorship slot over the years. Yellowe agreed and went for a Senate seat, which he won. Isokariari refused and lost to Odili. So it stands to reason that the riverine actually handed power to Odili in the name of equity.
At the end of his tenure in 2007, Odili was supposed to hand power back to the riverine in a rotatory arrangement but that did not happen. He handed power to upland Ikwerre. We are the first to commend his courage in doing the right thing, namely, paving way for an Ikwerre governor. That was the real equity considering that no Ikwerre man had governed Rivers since its 1967 creation till then.
Going by the narrative, there was an equal merit in the riverine outcry against the Ikwerre-born Governor Nyesom Wike, 2015 till date, succeeding another Ikwerre-born Governor Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, 2007-2015. The fear is that the upland may not relinquish power to the riverine at the end of Wike’s tenure in 2023.
At 70, come 15th August, Odili is an elder statesman per excellence. As the Dappa-Biriye of our days he is expected to mediate on our behalf, in short, stabilise Rivers and the larger Niger Delta. That is why Rivers people are unease with his stolid silence. What is he afraid of? Ultimately Rivers will overcome; but his impartial voice is absolutely necessary.
We are not saying that Wike should be denied a second term. Let Wike complete his full tenure for peace to prevail. What we want is a negotiated settlement where Odili would tell the upland to also step down for the riverine in 2023. Equity for every Rivers minority, not just the riverine,remains his unfinished mandate.
CHIGACHI EKE
Eke, a Port-Harcourt resident, wrote the treatise to commemorate the 70th birthday, on August 15,2018, of His Excellency Dr. Peter Otunuya Odili.Email: chigachieke@yahoo.co.uk
