In less than two years after the Jesse incident, another fire disaster arising from burst petrol pipelines has occurred in the Niger Delta, claiming no less than 200 lives, most of them allegedly school children. Once again it the poorest of the poor in the Niger Delta that have to pay the price for the ostentatious life of the rich few who are safely quartered in the Victoria Island area of Lagos or the exclusive area of Abuja.

In the last few years the poor people of the Niger Delta have taken more than their fair share of the consequences of the political profligacy and economic debauchery of the Nigerian leadership. The Niger Delta has been the victim of a callous environmental exploitation and abuse in the form of gas flaring, crude oil spillage, and explosion from burst petrol pipes. The Niger Delta region has lost valuable farm lands and fishing waters. The region has lost thousands of able-bodied young men and women in the numerous poverty-propelled violent conflicts that have taken place there in the last few years. Ogoni, Andoni, Eleme and Okirika, are war ravaged towns. The Ijaw, the Ishekiri, the Urobo and the Ilaje are constantly at each others' throat over such matters as the citing of Local Government Headquarters. While villages like Jesse and Ekporode were reduced to desert lands by gas explosions, others like Odi have been brought down to ruins by over-zealous security agencies who showed the world that they were ready to sacrifice any number of human beings in order to protect the oil reserves located in those areas. 

Much of the land itself remains a tale of neglect and abuse. For after nearly forty years oil exploration and exploitation in the Niger Delta, there is no pipe borne water in most of the villages; there is no electricity in most of the villages; there are no roads; there are no paved roads in most of the villages; there are no modern health facilities in most of the villages. The majority of the people are still living in squalor. Yet a sizeable amount of the resources used to build the flyovers and sky-scrappers in Lagos, Abuja, Kaduna, Kano, Jos, Ibadan, Enugu, and Benin, come from the ancestral land of the Niger Delta people. In the last thirty years or so the Nigerian economy has depended almost wholly on the money generated from the black gold found in the Niger Delta. Nigerian oil barons have built palaces for themselves that would compete with royal mansions anywhere in the world. Some of them have private jets, while others ride some of the most expensive cars in the world. Perhaps these oil dealers and contractors consider themselves smart. Indeed they are. But at what cost? What price is being paid for their smartness?

In the last few years of debauchery, billions of dollars worth of oil money was callously looted out of this country by leaders who should be certified clinically mad. If a thorough probe should be conducted into the financial dealings of all senior government functionaries during the kleptocratic dispensations of Babangida and Abacha, and it justice must be done, a number of those flaunting their ill-gotten riches before our eyes today may be remanded in prison or sent to the asylum. But that is not all. What about the rest of Nigeria, particularly the elite? What have we done? What have we failed to do? What could we have done that we neglected to do? Can we truly watch plight of the Niger Delta people without a profound sense of guilt and shame?

After the last fire disaster, many Nigerians expressed outrage at the behaviour of those young people who went with plates and pans, and buckets and pots to scoop petrol from licking pipes and perished in the process. Someone even came on TV to say "good for them," God don catch them." But this kind of judgement results from a jaundiced analysis of the situation on the ground. Those who make this kind of judgement do not appreciate the dynamics of poverty. They do not know that poverty has its own culture, and that extreme poverty humiliates and degrades people to the extent that they lose a good amount of their reasonability. What the self-righteous commentators on the fire explosions do not seem to understand is that the acrimonious poverty in Nigeria today, makes human life so cheap that it can readily be exchanged for a bucket of petrol.

Indeed what many comfortable observers of the situation do not appreciate is that the impoverishment and abuse of the people of Nigeria is the primary violence in the land. All other instances of violence, including the actions that culminated in the fire explosions at Jesse and Egborode constitute only a secondary violence. Why should anyone in Nigeria (and in the rich Niger Delta for that matter) be so poor that he or she has to go with pots and pans to scoop petrol from licking pipes in order to survive? With a land so rich in natural resources including petroleum, why should anyone have to buy gasoline, kerosine or diesel oil in plastic containers? If petrol and diesel were readily available in gas stations as they should be, would any driver stop to buy the same products from those hawking them with pots, pans, buckets and basins? Those who make thoughtless comments about the violence, the fires, and the regular tension in the Niger Delta need to think again.

The truth which many are running away from is that the successive leaders of this country have committed genocide against the Niger Delta people. Each time we put on our TV and watch those fires blazing, with those poverty-stricken children roasting in them, let the rich and powerful among us who have got more than their fair share of the benefits of the Niger Delta oil be filled with guilt and shame, for they are beneficiaries of the callous despoliation of a people. Yes, each time we hear reports of hundreds of deaths in one or the other of those poverty-provoked communal clashes in the Niger Delta, let the wealthy and comfortable among us who are protected by high walls and iron bars in their Lagos, Abuja or Kano villas, be filled with guilt and shame, for they feed fat on the human lives that were recklessly wasted in the Niger Delta. Yes, the Niger Delta is what it is today because of the combined forces of corruption, greed, neglect, and abuse.

I believe that the blood of the poor children sacrificed in the Niger Delta continuously cry out to heaven. And we must do something immediately to redress the anomaly. The country is in deep trouble. For all of us it can no longer be business as usual. The fire explosions in Jesse and Egborode are only a metaphor for our national predicament. The president must be told to sit up and face the challenges on the ground rather than junketing round the world. The legislators too must be told to abandon their accustomed game of mischief and intrigue and answer the call of the moment. The entire nation must now be urgently engaged in the process of restitution, reconstruction and reconciliation with regard to the Niger Delta, if more devastating fires are not to occur.

September 2001