Rivers crisis is ethnic crisis

Psychology of oppression

Reminding a challenged people of their disadvantage often provokes them to resistance. Put differently, there is a way you act, like making a careless comment, and you wake up a sleeping people. A handy example is the phenomenology of Steve Biko, 1946-1977. Born into the family of Mr. and Mrs. Mzimgayi Biko in Eastern Cape (Xhosaland), in Apartheid South Africa, his father died when Steve was four. This yoked his young mother with the onerous task of raising four children alone.

Steve and his elder brother called Kaya were a source of worry for their mother as the Security Police were always hunting for them, especially Kaya whose Lovedale Institute authorities pointed out as prominent member of the resistance POQO secret society. But Steve attended a Roman Catholic secondary school at Mariamhill before gaining admission to read medicine at the (white) University of Natal, Non-European section, Durban.

What provoked Steve more than anything else were not the “white supremacists” who cooked up Apartheid. His anger was kindled by the so-called “white liberals” who arrogated to themselves the task of telling black people how to respond to the supremacists’ violence not to become racists themselves. He declared that one white man could not step on his toe while another white man would tell him how to respond to the provocation of the offending white man. If any white man stepped on his toe, he swore to react in any manner he deemed fit.

His argument was that white supremacists and liberals alike were all racists as there were few good white men. That by allowing two white men to oppress and liberate him in turn, the black man had willfully allowed himself to be reduced from being to nothingness. Steve condemned those blacks who sang out their lamentation to seemingly sympathetic white liberals instead of doing something to end Apartheid. He reminded such blacks that the black man had the historic task of emancipating himself from the stranglehold of white racism. In this struggle for self-emancipation the black man stood alone and should expect no genuine help from any white. It is for this reason that he declared, “Black man, you are on your own!” This slogan became the motto for the Black Consciousness Movement, BCM, he founded.

Interestingly, from the late 1960s when Steve succeeded in isolating black students from white liberals in the bandwagon National Union of South African Students, NUSAS, by forming the black-only South African Students’ Organisation, SASO, that the anti-Apartheid struggle registered huge milestones. Blacks began to speak for themselves instead of relying on white liberals as their ventriloquists. A new breed of fiercely rebellious black youths emerged openly shouting, “Black man, you are on your own!”

Stockholm Syndrome

Like traumatised blacks in Apartheid South Africa, the Ijaw ethnic nationality, Nigerian fourth largest tribe, fell into a trap with their eyes wide open in 2015 when they allowed one Ikwerre supremacist called Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi to oppress them while embracing another Ikwerre liberal called Nyesom Ezebunwo Wike to defend them. Amaechi used Rivers State funds and resources to instigate or spearhead the removal of the Ijaw-born President Goodluck Jonathan from office at the national level. At the state level, Wike pranced about convincing some gullible Ijaws that he saved Mrs Patience Goodluck Jonathan from Amaechi.

The years rolled by and Ijaws lost grip having become completely dependent on Amaechi and Wike to extract juicy appointments and state privileges both at the national and state levels. No Ijaw could be hired or fired except by the mercies of these smart individuals who secretly laughed off their heads at the Ijaw man’s tom foolery. Still, some 24 million Ijaws never noticed when Wike shed his old toga of Ijaw liberator to emerge tormentor. None detected it since he was smart enough to front the Ijaw-born Governor Siminalayi Fubara as his successor in office. As for Amaechi, that one seamlessly yielded the stage to Wike before dropping out of sight.

But even Fubara was not good enough to rule Rivers State and Wike wanted him out in less than five months in office. Then we woke up one morning only to behold a cringing breed of Ijaws calling themselves Rivers Ijaws People’s Congress, RIPCO. While kowtowing to Wike, elements in this amorphous association poured their venom on Fubara as an ingrate during a civic reception they organised in Okrika to beg Wike not to abandon Ijaws.

Smiting his own chest in humble remorse, Boma Iyaye, a prominent RIPCO leader who holds down an NDDC appointment by virtue of Wike’s goodwill, pleaded with his benefactor not to judge Ijaws harshly because of one man. His public lamentation ran this way, “On behalf of our people, we are apologising to you for what our son is doing to you. We are sorry. We are sorry o because it is not in our nature to pay evil for good. You have done well for us, and we will continue to say thank you. Your Excellency, do not, because of this bad behaviour of our son, run away from us. Continue to have us in mind. We have never set our feet on the number one seat of Rivers State. You made it possible for us to become the governor of Rivers State.”

The Stockholm Syndrome, a psychological response, is defined as “a coping mechanism to a captive or abusive situation. People develop positive feelings toward their captors or abusers over time.” That best explains why Iyaye, a great son of the Izon nation, worked himself to tears begging his oppressor to accept him, but not Ijaws, back. Rather than confront Wike as Steve and the BCM would have done in Apartheid South Africa, Iyaye and other RIPCO patients will vilify you for criticising those making Rivers ungovernable for Governor Fubara.

But it was the RIPCO show of shame that finally awoke Ijaws from their 2015 slumber and are now asking some hard questions. Ijaws want to know if indeed Wike aimed to remove Fubara from office just as Jonathan was flagrantly removed from office by the unholy trinity of Amaechi, Mohammadu Buhari and Bola Tinubu. Ijaw nationalists are telling Ijaws that defending Fubara is a life and death commitment. That in the envisaged vicious struggle to save Fubara, Ijaws should expect no help from any do-gooder. The Ijaw man has the capacity to exist independently and defend his core interests.

Rivers crisis is ethnic crisis

In the wee hours of Saturday, 12th October 2024, Ezonebi Oyakemeagbegha, the National Publicity Secretary of the authentic Ijaw National Congress, INC, issued a statement warning against ethnic struggle in the Fubara-Wike crisis, “At this critical time, we believe that further escalation of this crisis is unnecessary. The ongoing situation is essentially a political dispute between Wike and Fubara, not an ethnic conflict. We urge everyone to be cautious with their words and not frame this as a tribal issue.”

The INC is the soul of Ijaw nationalism and must be taken seriously. But we would like to know Wike’s intentions destabilising the Sim Fubara-led government. Did any Ijaw burn down the state when the conceited Wike was governor? Oyakemeagbegha and the INC must know that the moment Wike assembled his hangers-on in Okrika to insult the Ijaw nation, the Fubara-Wike crisis automatically became an Ijaw-Ikwerre crisis. Of the four Local Government secretariats, namely, Emohua, Ikwerre, Eleme and Etche, razed by arsonists on Monday 7th October 2024, two are in Ikwerreland while none is in the riverine populated by Ijaws. Wike must be confronted head on.

But if for any reason Wike succeeds in removing Fubara from office, it is unlikely that other ethnic groups will rule the state in the foreseeable future as Rivers may simply cease to exist. Even President Tinubu who tolerates Wike could lose his office. The aftermath of the Wild Wild West in the First Republic comes to mind. If Wike starts fire in Rivers, the conflagration will most certainly spread to the remaining five South-South states in addition to the South East. Enough of the Wike nuisance! Ijaws are saying enough is enough!!!

.Akamande is Leader of Thought of Izon Ebe. Email: [email protected], Phone: 070 3846 3111