2 March 2005
editorial
Lagos — The military raid on the Odioma community in Brass local government area of Rivers State followed the usual gruesome pattern. As always in the Niger-Delta, the problem began with oil exploration.
Shell had reportedly paid compensation to another community on a parcel of land which the Odioma community says belongs to it. According to the Odioma spokesman, the community was shocked to discover that Shell awarded a land clearing and surveying contract of the area for oil exploration to one James Jester of Basambiri, a younger brother of the speaker of the Bayelsa State House of Assembly. The spokesman said the payment was made on a false claim that the Owukubu land in question belonged to the other community and not Odioma.
In most other places, this would be a simple matter to be talked over. Not so in Nigeria, especially in the Niger-Delta where a combination of endemic poverty, greed, and political manipulation was sure to escalate any dispute over oil patronage. Which was why all efforts to resolve the disagreement, including mediations by the Bayelsa State Governor, Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, collapsed.
In no time, the communal crisis snowballed into unspeakable brigandage and fatalities. A delegation of rival claimants to the compensation, reportedly going to Brass on a peace mission, was allegedly ambushed and attacked in the water-ways by cult leaders from Odioma. Twelve persons were said to have been killed, among them four councillors and a pregnant woman.
To this heinous crime, the stock response of the state was equally predictable. Last month, troops invaded the Odioma community, ostensibly on a mission to arrest the cult leaders and their accomplices for the massacre of the 12. As with previous operations of this type, a substantial number of the houses were reportedly set ablaze by the invading soldiers and scores of persons killed, in addition to hundred of others who were injured. The rest have been displaced, having fled into the mangrove forest and other towns. Chief Matthew Akono-Erise, a community spokesman estimates that no fewer than 30 persons may have died, including the 85-year old traditional ruler of the town. He said apart from schools and churches, there is hardly any other building in the town standing intact, untouched by the invading army.
Now, all right thinking people would support the Bayelsa governor when he said that no responsible government will allow the killings on the Brass water-way to go unpunished and his promise to the cult leaders on phone that he would bring them to justice. The crime was not only reprehensible, the massacre was carried out with such impunity that if allowed to unchecked, will surely lead to anarchy in that part of the Niger-Delta.
To that extent, we can understand the mind-set of the governor. Yet, we are all the same appalled by his rather triumphant admission that he ordered the invasion of Odioma and sent in the troops. We know from experience of Odi, Zaki-Biam and many other trouble spots that such invasions have hardly aided the course of justice. As with similar military campaigns in the past, the suspected perpetrators of the Brass massacre are yet to be arrested, weeks after the invasion of Idioma. As we have said repeatedly on such occasions, perpetrators of these heinous crimes don't stay on in the community in question to await the arrival of military invaders. Those who remain behind are mainly the innocent ones who are either naive to think that no government would order an invasion of its own people, or think they have nowhere else to go. When the invasion does come, they are the ones who get maimed or killed and have their property and dwellings razed to the bargain.
From this pattern, past invasions have settled a few questions for us as a nation. The first is that while the campaign brief may not be made public, a military invasion always leads to killings, arson, displacement of people, massive destruction of property, and sometimes rape. The second lesson is that we are yet to see any military campaign which led to the direct apprehension of the suspects at the time of the invasion. The third, which can be implied from the second, is that the burden of invasion is borne mainly by the innocent ones. From all this, the compelling logic is that invasions are meant as reprisals, much in the fashion of colonial times.
While brigandage leading to the mass murder of opponents must be discouraged, no responsible government ought to display an equal disregard for life and human suffering. Even though we doubt it very much, it is possible that in line with his promise, Governor Alamieyeseigha may be able to restore wounded and displaced persons fully back to what they were before the Odioma invasion. But pray, how is he to compensate the innocent ones who died?
We believe that government must begin to learn how to fight criminality, no matter how odious, with civil rather than military methods. And the first step towards this is for government to restrain the impulse to reprisals. Under this democracy, every government ought to distance itself from the days of Captain Philips and Oba Ovonramwen of Benin.
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