By Paul Onomuakpokpo
Despite the nation’s
attempts to remain oblivious of being a pastiche of unresolved contradictions,
it is often confronted with the stark reminders that it cannot keep forging
ahead until it decisively launches itself on the path of enduring stability.
Such cohesion would continue to elude the nation in so far as tepid
efforts are only made to identify what gnaws at its well-being at
those moments that there are threats to the interests of those who consider the
country as their exclusive patrimony.
If the victims of Fulani’s antediluvian
practices of herding livestock had not demonstrated a clear resolve to shake
off their ogre, a disposition vitalised by national outrage, we would not spare
a thought for those whose farmlands and other means of livelihood are
being decimated by the business interests of others. But as has been shown in
the herdsmen-farmers’ crisis and other crises in the past, the state’s
intervention rather provokes the aggrieved citizens’ animus against it.
The citizens are reminded of the state’s smug indisposition to
appropriately provide the right answers to the questions they have raised about
what should be done to guarantee their existence as eligible stakeholders
in the polity. When this is the situation, aggrieved
citizens feel more alienated and driven to resorting to self-help.
It is the
same way that the state has responded to the question of socio-economic
injustice in the Niger Delta. Whenever the indigenes of the region
lament that their major means of livelihood, farming and fishing,
have been destroyed by oil pollution , a situation aggravated by a
dearth of commensurate compensation, the rest of the citizens who largely
benefit from the resources of the region often dismiss them as a people
who are never appreciative of what the state has done for them. Thus
if the citizens now resort to self-help, the state does not see the need
to consider the merit of their case in the first place. Its response brims with
hubris and hauteur as expressed in the immediate deployment of its
might to squelch any protest.
To be
sure, while the attacks on oil facilities in the Niger Delta have drawn
attention to the problems of the area, continuing to take up arms against the
state is not the best strategy by the indigenes of the region. Such a
strategy benefits only a very negligible number of people who are invited
by the state to negotiate some selfish terms of peace. Such
deals have transformed those previously marooned in the creeks
as agitators into billionaires. They now possess the financial sinews to
bulldoze their way into public offices or as king makers in
the political arena, and to set up universities and other big
businesses. It is because such a strategy of selective state beneficence
does not improve the lot of the majority of the people that there is a
ceaseless replication of the tactic of threatening oil production in the Niger
Delta.
