Oil And Local Prosperity: A Study Of ‘Two Kingdoms’

By Patrick Dele Cole

The King of Abonnema has just finished a magnificent building he called his palace. The king of Okpo has done the same – built a palace. But there the similarity ends. Abonnema is one of the major towns among the Kalabari Ijaw; its history is long and illustrious. It has prominent indigenes whose names are well-known to all Nigerians, Wenike Briggs, Ajumogobia, Graham-Douglas, Ferdin and Alabraba, W.W. Whyte, Mr. Justice Adolphus Karibi Whyte (SCJ), Odoliyi Lolomari (Ex-MD, NNPC), Olu Fubara, Ambassador D.D. Obunge, Admiral Bob Manuel, Chief Lulu Briggs, Dr. Dodiyi Manuel, Capt. Briggs (Ex-Minister of Transport), Capt. Ajumogobia, Chief S.K Dagogo Jack (Ex-INEC chairman), Deputy Comptroller of Customs, Bibi Akpana, Tom Fabyan (former chief executive of African Petroleum), L.M. Jacks (Permanent Secretary, Internal Affairs), Miss World (Agbani Darego); Miss Nigeria (Syster Jack), and many others.

Okpo, on the other hand, is a small village which many years ago you would have passed even before you blink once. It is part of Obuama or Harry’s town which is regarded as a small village in the pantheon of Kalabari Ijaw towns. So Okpo is a small village of a small village.

A few years ago, some oil companies did some seismic work in Okpo village. In doing so, they brought in a lot of equipment, reclaimed large tracks of land, and employed hundreds of people – thus awakening a small dot of a village into a potential metropolis. The seismic activity ended and the oil company packed up and left. Chief Diamond Bob Manuel Tobin–West saw his opportunity in this substantial real estate, substantial compensation for the seismic activities from a company with a lively corporate social responsible mentality. The people of Okpo were compensated. Instead of Chief Diamond taking his own share of the money to Port Harcourt to build a beautiful house and or a hotel, he decided to return to the spot and there restart and rebuild his community. The Chief is a man who lives by example. He is a graduate from UK and Canada: has a family well settled in these countries.

Chief Diamond built himself a palace in the old seismic site. He encouraged his people to return and follow his example. He built a complex of six houses; his brothers and sisters are in the process of completing modern structures, with roads and amenities – water, electricity, schools, etc. This year’s Christmas and New Year celebration in his palace had all trappings of modernity, complete with carols, fireworks, plenty of food and drinks. There is a clinic nearby. He has galvanised all the villages around him and a modern metropolis is taking shape in a formerly one – blink village. His neighbours in the bigger town of Obuama are beginning to recognise his worth and influence and constantly visit him to talk about the progress of Okpo and the surrounding area. Incidentally, the Deputy Governor of Rivers State, Mrs. Harry Banigo is from Obuama. So is Chief Ombo Harry, once Executive Director, Finance of NNPC. The former Chairman of PDP Rivers State, Marshall Harry, the former Deputy Speaker of Rivers State House of Assembly, another Harry and so on are from Obuama- None of the above has what the vision of Chief Diamond who hopes to build a true metropolis in this forsaken enclave.

Dele Cole’s Nonexistent ‘Igbo’ Slaves

By Ochereome Nnanna

On  Tuesday, 30th August 2016, at exactly 10.41am, I received a text from an unidentified frequent sender of messages to my platforms whenever he reads topics that agitate his mind, whether written by me or others.

He wrote: “Greetings. How can Dr. Patrick Dele Cole, in today’s Vanguard Newspaper…assert that the Igbo were slaves of the Ijaw? If, for the purpose of argument, one or two Igbo men were captured, held as slaves, or were sold into slavery in those days, how does that translate to the Igbo (an entire ethnic nationality) becoming slaves to the Ijaw…?”

Dele Cole’s article was entitled: “Nigerians And Their Origin”. He was displaying his rich knowledge of how people, not just in Nigeria but also in different parts of the world, acquired their current ethno-racial identities; how some powerful conquerors like the Jihadist Fulani, “dropped” their language and adopted those of their majority subjects, the Hausa, in order get assimilated and rule over them effectively.

Cole, at the tail end of his very interesting tapestry of sampling, however, made a conclusion I found both curious and contradictory compared to his earlier conclusion about the “Igbo” and “Ijaw” (I am putting these words in inverted commas for a reason that will be explained shortly). According to Cole: “Who are the Hausa-Fulani? The French of Normandy conquered England in 1066 and adopted their language. They were not known as French-English but English…Thus in the North of Nigeria they (Fulani) should be known as Hausa”.

Before I go on, let me correct Cole. The Fulani never dropped their language. Though they adopted the Hausa and other languages in areas they conquered (such as Nupe in Bida and Yoruba in Ilorin) they still maintained their Fulbe language and identity. In fact, former Governor Sule Lamido of Jigawa State, a Fulani royal who hails from Bamaina in Birnin Kudu Local Government of the state, told me he did not “learn” Hausa until he went to school.

Domiciliary Accounts: No People-Respecting Govt Lies To Its Citizens

By Patrick Dele Cole

The principal reason for the heedless pursuit of a cashless society is the belief that this will stop corruption. This is a Western notion which we have embraced fully – bringing lots of jobs to the West – the computers, the dispensing machines, the chips, pin, cards, etc. In the process it has changed banking beyond recognition. The bankers no longer want to see their clients: Their attitude is this: bring your money to the bank, but speak to the ATM. The rationale is fundamentally flawed in a developing economy.

The system – cashless – is presaged by an assumption that all of us have computer related devices – i.e. phones; that we are literate, that the ATMs work, that there is electricity and that ATMs are available nation wide.

If you live in the cities, you may be able to do all of this; ( in Europe and US they even have receiving ATMs where the traders can actually deposit end of day sales, thus we have the beginning of making high street Banks irrelevant and unnecessary.) Bottom line is to reduce cost of banking and increase profit for bank owners.

The question we should ask our Western minders is this: was corruption eradicated or reduced in their countries because their society was cashless? In Nigeria the outcome necessarily is mixed. In my village we have one bank, one ATM, no light therefore most of the time the ATM is not working. The traditional local bank manager is an encyclopedia of local custom, he knows who is coming up in society so that when CBN, for example, intervenes in agriculture the bank manager is able to interpret that intervention to potential clients who stand to benefit.

Such intervention in small scale agriculture may be the saving grace of Nigeria. But our suited CBN bureaucrats obviously have not created the agricultural intervention for the farmers but for a class of fast thinking, fast talking computer literate manipulators, who know how to fill the CBN forms without leaving Lagos, Ibadan, Kaduna, Kano, Maiduguri etc. These city sleek operators are the beneficiaries of nearly all CBN interventions whether for agriculture or transport etc.