The Ogoni People And Nigeria’s Faulty Configuration – By Fegalo Nsuke

Agitations for a fair and just system in Nigeria is increasingly becoming a threat to the country’s stability. This is  largely because the leadership appear to turn blind eyes to the concerns of the agitators and not see it as an opportunity to right the wrongs and set the country on the path of progress.The immediate response of the authorities had been to ignore the merits of the agitations and to deploy the military to troubled regions with the usual mandate to restore “peace”.

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Peace in Nigeria means the absence of protests, peace means the people must be silent in the face of discrimination, peace means military clampdown to force people not to express themselves in ways that are against dominant interest of those in power. Peace in Nigeria is not the collective will and happiness to work together in a fair and just system.

The Nigerian system expects, for instance, the Ogoni people to be silent in the face of clearly unfair and discriminator laws which splits our country into 36 states, all of which are funded by resources from one region including the Ogoni whereas we, the Ogoni people, cannot have a state of our own” We have consistently protested against this arrangement and I am confident that a compromise will only be reached when and only when the Ogoni people will be allowed to function within Nigeria as a distinct ethnic nationality.

In Ogoni today, for us to have as common as a school, hospital or road, an Ikwerre man who sits as governor of Rivers State will have to decide. We have no right within Nigeria to set our priorities, build our own economy, set standards for the protection of our environment and make laws to improve our well being as Ogoni people.

The Nigerian government is interested in our oil but they do not care whether we are happy or not as Nigerians. They exploit our resources without concern to protect and preserve our delicate environment. We have decimated our collective heritage by allowing a third party like Shell to come into our country and violate our people’s dignity. We care not about our people in so  much as we get a portion of the proceeds from the violations. Our lawmakers, for instance, are the highest paid in the world despite the fact that our economy is no where near the top 10 in Africa in terms of standard of living. We pride ourselves of an impressive GDP but over 50percent of our people cannot eat a complete meal daily.