The
leader of the Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force (NDPVF), Alhaji Mujadid Asari
Dokubo, has declared that the emerging merger of the Action Congress of Nigeria
(ACN) with Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), All Nigeria Peoples Party
(ANPP) and a faction of the All Peoples Grand Alliance (APGA) will spell doom
for Yoruba people.
According to him, the current promoters of the merger with
Northern establishment have failed to learn from history; of how people who
formed alliance with Northern political elite ended up.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with Saturday Sun,
Asari-Dokubo, who disclosed that Ijaw will stake their lives for an Igbo
Presidency in 2019 in return for the support the South East has given President
Goodluck Jonathan, said the opposition must work to ensure that Jonathan wins
the 2015 Presidential election, if it wants the survival of Nigeria.
Asari-Dokubo said Northerners should stop issuing threats about
the 2015 election because Ijaw, whose consciousness is very high now, will not
be intimidated.
He described former President Olusegun Obsanjo as a great man
who implemented some of the thoughts of the Major Gideon Orkar-led coup to
liberate Nigeria from the grip of Northern domination.
Excerpts:
Opposition Merger
It is political suicide for the South-West to align with the
North in the power equation. I was with a Yoruba Oba during the Hajj and he
said what was happening is that some people want to change the history of the
Yoruba people and that they would not succeed. He is a Muslim Yoruba Oba and he
told me that until 1900, Fulani slave raiders were still raiding his village
for slaves. He said they were imposing tax and did not preach religion. He said
it was Ibadan that was protecting them. The Oba pointed out that Awolowo
refused to go into alliance with them (North) and that the Akintola that did it
ended up on a sad note. Abiola who was hand in gloves with them was also dealt
a great blow. The Oba said anybody that wants to subjugate Yoruba to the Fulani
hegemony would not end well. According to him, Yoruba will never forget their
experience and encounter with Fulani. So, as far I am concern, it will be one
of the greatest mistakes Yoruba would make if the merger succeeds.
Yoruba have been in the forefront to put the North in its proper
place. If Yoruba, through its fighters had not stopped Fulani at Oshogbo,
they were coming down South to enslave our people. Anybody desperate to form
alliance with the North should be checked very well, his Yorubaness is in
question. Nobody calling himself progressive would go and align with
feudalists. It does not correlate. These are two parallels. Feudalists
promoting feudal hegemony and progressives promoting egalitarian society, the
two are opposite sides. They have rendered their people poor and send them to
the streets as urchins. For all these years that the Gambari have been
manipulating political power and seizing the wealth of Nigeria, of what benefit
has it been to their people? Yoruba can point to legacies left by Obafemi
Awolowo; what legacies can they point to in the North. When names of Awolowo,
Azikiwe are being mentioned, they mention Ahmadu Bello. What did he do? Their
society is being run in such a way that it promotes primitivism of the crudest
form.
President Goodluck Jonathan Presidency has brought a new form of
assertiveness. Before they used violence in the name of religion to coerce
people into submission, they have threatened but it is not as easy
as before. The greatest natural barrier they had was the rain forest; their
horses were ineffective, mosquitoes, tsetse fly would kill their houses. They
did not come here and they would never come here. Now they are confronting a
new set of Ijaw people, who can look them eye-ball to eye-ball and tell them
that’s their limit.
Our debt to Igbo
Would the North have been able to fight the Biafra war, if some
of our people had not gone to align with them? When I was growing up, my
grandmother was a staunch supporter of Biafra; she would have been killed. They
called her all names and referring to us as Sabo, corrupt name for saboteur.
But today, history has vindicated my family. My granduncle, King Fredrick
Amachree 8th, abdicated the throne because of support for Biafra, becoming the
first King from Kalabari to die in exile in the 300 history of the Amachree
dynasty. People did not realise where we stood. Today we tell people, we saw
what people did not see. It would have been better if we had been with Igbo,
Efik and others rather than allow Gambaris (Hausa-Fulani) to come here. People
have now seen it.
Yes, there were mistakes on both sides; Igbo made mistakes and
we also made mistakes. But if we had sat down and supported the cause of
liberation, it would have been better. During Jonathan’s election, the Igbo
even voted for the South-South. Before, southern minority as we are called,
always voted for the North due to divide and rule tactics. Former Midwestern
Region would always vote for who the Yoruba voted for. This part of the country
was their no man’s land, where they all shop for votes. During Jonathan’s
election, Igbo carried it on their head and voted for him. And this is a debt
the Ijaws who are second to the Igbo in this part of the world owe them to
ensure that 2019, if Nigeria survives, we would stake our lives to make an Igbo
President, no matter what it takes.
Boko Haram has failed
Boko Haram tactics is not working. They say they would make the
country ungovernable and they are doing that by killing their people. Our
people in the North should come back home, let them also go back and we would
see who would blink. When trouble comes, they enter their trailers and go back
home, but they cannot stay one week there before they come back, because their
land is that of destitution, hunger and disease. They are daring and pushing
people and a time would come when everybody is waiting for the first man that
would throw the stone. Let that man throw the stone then you would see
missiles. A time would come when the Federal Government would no longer be able
to compel Southern states governors to protect Northerners living there. Some
of them say the 2015 election would be settled on the streets; let them try and
we would settle it there, we are not afraid
Every time they say Chief E.K Clarke is talking and heating up
the polity, but they are doing the worst by shooting people. Ijaw are only
talking. Ijaw talks because they, by tradition, do not go into unjust
war. The spiritual constitution of Ijaw land, the metaphysical
constitution of Ijaw land and spiritual entities would not assist you if you
fight an unjust war. So the Ijaw man runs when you look for his trouble. This
is why when people say Goodluck Jonathan is clueless; it is because he does not
want to fight an unjust war. Ijaw nation is the only nation that is built on warfare.
Ijaw nation is built on perpetual warfare among themselves and against others.
But immediately there is an external enemy, all Ijaws would come together to
confront the enemy. Ijaw doesn’t fight an unjust war and any war an Ijaw man
fights he has been pushed to the wall. Ijaw people can be small but we give
hope to others. These ones the North is doing, they are pushing Jonathan. No
President would accept what they are doing. They should not threaten what
they cannot finish.
We say we have terms of eight years uninterrupted. Whatever
figure they have cooked up for their registration and population is none of our
business. When the election comes in 2015, Goodluck Jonathan has no right to
say he is not contesting and he will win. He must win; they must make him win.
There are no two ways about it; they must make him win. We are not going to
compromise, whether Goodluck Jonathan is a good man or bad man, it is not our
business. We have eight years and Jonathan is the person we have brought out.
They must make him. APC must make him win because if they don’t make him, then
they would know. The final result must read that Jonathan has been
elected for another term. If they like, people can call us names; call us
bigots, tribal jingoist, we are not concern, as longer as Jonathan wins.
The Ijaw Consciousness
During the end of the late General Sani Abacha regime, the Ijaw
consciousness rose and till today it is the most dangerous in the history of
Nigeria. They would have foreseen it that Ijaw, by orientation, are very
violent people. Check their history, Ijaw never came together as one
nation, they are several nations perpetually at war with themselves. You have
the Kingdom of Kalabari, Kingdom of Grand Bonny, Kingdom of Nembe, Kingdom of
Okirika that were at war with themselves and with others. So Ijaw history is
replete with war against everybody and there was no thought of unity. Until
people like Joshua Fumudoh, T.K Ogoriba, Tony Igrube, Ghomorai, Fibersima, M.T
Akobo, Senator Zuofa, and many other decided to bring Ijaw people not only in
Nigeria but in the Cameroons and they gave identity to themselves.
With this Ijaw consciousness, became a religion and it was
associated with the rise in the power of potency of the Ijaw war cause. When
this happened, Ijaw became bolder. When they were smaller they were
fighting bigger nations, not to talk of now when they have become bigger and so
everybody became small and tiny and everywhere the Ijaw people were, they were
fighting everybody. For the very first time, Ijaw political elite
aligned with the Gambari North and the North, being naïve, did not know they
were playing with tiger’s tail. They treated the Ijaw people with disdain.
Before, Ijaw political elite had believed that Yoruba and the Igbo were the
enemy. Ijaw in the West saw Yoruba as an enemy and Ijaw in the East saw Igbo as
the enemy and the Gambari North was happy. But all of a sudden, the
Asari-Dokubos, Oronto Douglas, Felix Tuodolos, Isaac Osukas, Patterson Ogonas,
Kingsley Kukus understood that one gunshot is more important to the Ijaw
man than a thousand years of negotiation, dialogue and preaching and that
self-determination and resource-control is by any means necessary. That was
what revolutionized the Ijaw people.
Every step taken to divide us has strengthened us. Now, Ijaw can
look the North in the face and tell them they don’t contribute anything to the
Commonwealth and have no business being in Nigeria in the first place.
There is confusion now because Yoruba and Igbo are wondering where Ijaw got the
boldness to confront the Gambari North.
In the 2011 election, Igbo voted overwhelming for Jonathan for
the first time, which in the calculation of the North, would not have been
possible because Igbo and Ijaw are sworn enemies. The 2011 election clearly
showed that it was a lie. What grievances and problems Igbo had was kept aside
in 2011 and they aligned with Ijaw people.
Obasanjo’s place in history
Obasanjo, after late Major Gideon Okah, is the greatest human
being I have seen. Before, maybe we did not understand him, but Obasanjo
implemented the Orkar’s coup script up to 40 per cent. Without Obasanjo, there
would not have been an Azazi as Chief of Army Staff; there would not have been
an Alex Ogomudia as Chief of Army Staff. Without Obasanjo, there would not have
been Goodluck Jonathan. The political pattern in Nigeria is known; it is either
President is North and Vice- President Ibo or President Yoruba, Vice- President
Hausa/ Fulani. But Obasanjo changed the political landscape. Yes, he never had
a cordial relationship with Ijaw people and people like us detested that, but
apart from the corruption issue, Obasanjo empowered people. There was a
conscious effort to create a balance in the patronage distribution in Nigeria.
He did it very well without anybody blinking.
Olusegun Obasanjo has done the greatest thing. He has done
beyond the words expressed by Gideon Okah. He came and saw that some people are
practicing internal colonialism. Before now, there are some positions
exclusively reserved for the North. Every juicy appointment is for them,
but Obasanjo stopped it. Obasanjo’s quarrel with Jonathan is not far from this
because Jonathan, as an Ijaw man, has failed to understand this politics and
pursue the liberation of the minorities. Obasanjo feels that with the Ijaw
consciousness, the minority mentality would die.
Desperation for Power
Powers means a lot to the North. They are sending the signal
gradually with some of them saying Nigeria could become Cote d’Ivorie. The
implication, if you follow the Cote d’ Ivoire politics, means they might use
the military option. They are already sending the message out. Jonathan should
not sleep; he should not behave like Aguyi-Ironsi who left his flank open. So
we must speak out and tell the Yoruba political elite that the Lion who sacked
them from Oyo-Ile is still a Lion. We must tell them, if they don’t
remember that there was once Afonja. Obasanjo, without making too much noise,
brought us to term with the reality of our history. And it would be wrong for
us as a people to sacrifice it. If Jonathan, as person, is not fighting the
battle well, we should be able to tell him. Because we are not ready to go to
the days when an Ijaw man cannot be an NSA, where Berom man cannot be the GMD
of NNPC, where it would be difficult for a Yoruba to become Chief of Army
Staff, for Igbo it is even unheard of. If there was no Obasanjo, there wouldn’t
have been Ihejerika.
Source: Sun
No comments:
Post a Comment